The first pebbles have shaken loose and are clattering down ahead of the landslide

By now you’ve heard. Maybe you tracked yesterday’s events live on Telegram or X. However and wherever you heard, what happened yesterday afternoon and evening was monumental.

IS monumental — even if, as we cynics must always note — it contains as much performance and politicking as true defiance.

Although I still, and always, hope there’s no shooting war between freedomistas and domestic tyrants, safe to say the long, unendurable, seemingly endless Awkward Stage is over.

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Yesterday …

First came Texas governor Gregg Abbott, not only keeping his word — a rare enough thing for a politician — but defying Monday’s (constitutionally ignorant, but highly convenient for the fedgov) Nazgul diktat forbidding Texans to protect their own borders. He decreed, correctly, a state’s absolute authority to defend itself from invasion if the fedgov would not.

He began:

The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States.

He concluded:

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw ComradeX’s link to the declaration on the Living Freedom Forums.

Then it went on skipping all evening as, one-by-one, other state governors took their stand with Texas.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (FL) on X :

If the Constitution really made states powerless to defend themselves against an invasion, it wouldn’t have been ratified in the first place and Texas would have never joined the union when it did.

TX is upholding the law while Biden is flouting it.

FL will keep assisting Texas with personnel and assets.

Gov. Kevin Stitt (OK) on X: “Oklahoma stands with Texas.” (Over a video of Texas National Guard troops on the march, tracked by multiple news cameramen.)

Kristi Noem of South Dakota spoke up. Greg Gianforte of Montana did. Idaho congressperson Heather Scott posted on X. Though she noted that she was still waiting for Gov. Brad Little to speak, she herself stood for Texas and state’s rights. After a little digging into her former X posts, Silver (again on the forums) found one from last week on “101 ways YOU can help preserve our rights and freedoms in our state and country.”

Her list is neither all good nor all bad, but some, including the overall theme and title, was a bit … familiar. When Rhett saw it he joked, “You should sue her.” Nah. Go for it, Heather Scott!

ETA: This morning the list of states pledging moral and material support looks like this:

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Of course, politicians are still politicians. There’s no telling what will come of this in the near future.

But they’re no longer just slinging words or lawsuits. Abbott sent more razor wire and more troops. Reportedly (unconfirmed), yesterday evening, Florida Highway Patrol officers were seen working side-by-side with Texas National Guard members on the border near Eagle Pass. Other states seem to be implying more-than-verbal support.

When he posted to the forums about Abbott’s proclamation, ComradeX asked, “Is Texas seceding?”

Not yet. But Abbott is no longer just defying federal orders. He’s now defying a Supreme Court decision. And others — politicians, by definition insiders and within-the-system types — are standing with him.

At what risk, who knows? Maybe small, but maybe earthshattering.

On the forums, Silver noted that, while this may not be secession, this is how empires begin to fall — out on the borders, far from centers of power.

I won’t even try to guess what’s next — or whether events will take five months or five years or 20 years to play out. Likely there will be long periods when nothing seems to happen, and others that feel like loss and defeat.

But I do believe that, after the long, long agonizing years of seeming idleness and decay of freedom, as the cracks grew wider and the pressures built up, this ends the Awkward Stage.

Decades from now, Americans will look at yesterday and agree, “This is where it all began.”

Welcome to the future.

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Personal note: I am not anti-immigration. I have always been pro-immigration and even believe, at least in theory, in open borders. But I’ve also always said you can’t have open borders with a welfare state. And now, with the federal government and global NGOs* encouraging and facilitating the entry of millions of random strangers (including violent criminals, foreign agents, carriers of exotic diseases, permanent leeches, and people who neither know nor value freedom) and moving them into the interior of the country with no vetting and no transparency, … well, to hell with them all and those who sent them. It’s a true invasion, and our own fifth-columnists are fully responsible.

*When things formerly called charities or foundations get called “non-governmental organizations,” you know they’re absolutely working dishonestly on behalf of governments