Texas Independence Movement Gains Momentum: Daniel Miller

In this aerial image from a drone, tug boats tow the semi-submersible drilling platform Noble Danny Adkins through the Port Aransas Channel into the Gulf of Mexico in Port Aransas, Texas, on Dec. 12, 2020. Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Proponents of Texas independence anticipate winning the referendum in which Texans will decide whether a process to determine the best way to withdraw from the union should be started, Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, told The Epoch Times.

If radicals that are currently in Congress are put in charge of health, economy, energy it may adversely impact the people of Texas and more and more Texans would like to exit the union, Miller said in a recent interview on Epoch Times’ Crossroads program.

Texans are concerned that more of their jobs would be killed through the green new deal, that the policies of the federal government in Washington would lead to more centralization, more socialism would be introduced, more powers would be appropriated by the federal government and as a result, the rights of the people of Texas would be “eroded and trampled on,” Miller explained.

Miller predicts that if these tendencies continue a referendum on Texas secession could be won at least by 10 to 15 percentage points depending on how radical the government in Washington gets.

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The movement led by Miller supports the concept of small government which is in contrast with the current situation when the federal government receives from Texas $103 to $160 billion annually in taxpayers’ money giving little in return, he said.

“It’s like going to a doctor. The doctor drawing all of the blood out of your body spilling about 40 percent of it on the floor, re-injecting the rest of it, and then saying: hey, you realize you wouldn’t be alive without me,” Miller explained.

Exiting the union, which Miller calls Texit, means that Texans will determine their own laws instead of being governed by “2.5 million unelected bureaucrats in Washington,” the organization‘s website states.

“We have real issues here in Texas related to the border and immigration” and many others that a nation-state has to deal with, Miller said.

Miller believes that the Constitution of the United States does not prohibit any state from leaving the union. The Constitution lists all the things that states are prohibited from doing and the list does not include a prohibition against the state withdrawal, he said.

According to the Constitution, the perpetuity of the union depends on the right of local self-government unimpaired to all the states, Miller said adding that he believes that Texans would not agree that their right of local self-government hasn’t been impaired.

Flextronics International Apple factory employees work on Apple Mac Pro computer assembly in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 20, 2019. Tom Brenner/Reuters

Texas economy ranks as the 10th largest economy in the world surpassing Canada and South Korea and just below Brazil and Italy. It is the 2nd biggest economy in the United States behind California, according to a report of the University of Texas produced in September.

Although the state’s economy was hit by the pandemic caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus the job losses were less dramatic compared to the United States, the report says (pdf).

Texas is the biggest producer of oil and natural gas in the nation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (pdf). Agriculture and technology are also prominent in its diverse economy. Among Texas-based companies are computer manufacturer Dell, AT&T, and chipmaker Texas Instruments.

Independence Movements

The Texas Nationalist Movement was founded “to secure and protect the political, cultural, and economic independence of the nation of Texas and to restore and protect a constitutional Republic and the inherent rights of the people of Texas,” according to the organization’s website.

Over the years the movement has grown into a Texas independence movement advocating of the state of Texas leaving the union and becoming an independent, self-governing nation, the website says.

Men dressed as 19th-century soldiers participate in the reenactment of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, on March 2, 2018.

The organization has engaged in “many campaigns related to not just Texas but our cultural preservation,” Miller said explaining that Texans had to fight a battle against their own state Board of Education. The board wanted to remove the references to the Alamo defenders as heroes because “the word ‘hero’ was value charged and it was a value judgment.”

There are folks who want to “indoctrinate or change the Alamo story to fit a neo-Marxist progressive rhetoric,” Miller added.

For Texans, the Battle of the Alamo is a symbol of heroic resistance during their struggle for independence from Mexico. A small number of Texans (about 200 according to historians) defended a fort in San Antonio for 13 days against the Mexican army of thousands strong led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

Although most of the defenders were killed by the enemy their sacrifice engaged and weakened the Mexican army which contributed to the victory of Texan forces two months later and Texas’ gaining independence.

According to Miller, nationalist movements in the world are on the rise judging by the fact that the number of recognized countries rose from over 54 after World War II to more than 190 by the end of the 20th century. People in countries or areas like people in Texas want the ability to govern themselves the way they want to be governed, said Miller.

Supporters of Brexit demonstrate outside Europe House in London, on Sept. 9, 2020. Matt Dunham/ AP Photo

The movement headed by Miller has drawn from the experience of independence movements around the world such as the UK’s exit from the European Union (known as Brexit), Scotland’s independence movement to leave the UK, and Catalans’ quest to seek independence from Spain.

Miller found the arguments on the Brexit debate such as “uncaring bureaucracy in Brussels, a massive overpayment that could better be used at home and reallocated at home, that centralization of power in Brussels that threatens to erode the personal rights and liberties of the British” very similar to the Texas situation.

The organization also researched Catalonia’s independence movement and found that their materials making a case against the Spanish central government could have been used to recruit Texas supporters if only the proper names had been replaced by Texas and Washington, Miller said.

This fight in Texas that people fight right now is “really part of a much larger movement around the world to reclaim the right of self-government from a bunch of political elites who think they know what’s best,” Miller said.

Miller preferred not to use the term ‘secession’ to describe the process of Texas gaining independence and rather use the term ‘withdrawal’ or ‘exit.’

Secession means “the withdrawal from a political body, typically an incorporated political body,” Miller explained. If the American government is an “absolute centralized government and that that the United States is a nation-state that has sovereignty and the states are just merely administrative subdivisions” then the word secession can be used, Miller continued.

Miller considers Texit a withdrawal or exit from a political and economic union that no longer serves Texas interests much like the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.