All this talk of secession is making me more than a little bit crazy.

After a majority of voters – nearly 51 percent of them – re-elected President Obama on Nov. 6, petitions began circulating asking voters in several (mostly Southern) states if they wanted to secede from the Union.

Leading the way? Why, Texas – of course. We’re No. 1, apparently, in the number of goofballs who believe a better form of governance is to remove the state from the Union, start a new country and then try to become a part of the world community. Gov. Rick Perry opposes secession … now! Good for him.

Have you seen the bumper stickers popping up on motor vehicles in Amarillo? They make you swallow hard … you know?

I’ve been wondering for weeks now whether residents of, say, Maryland wanted to secede in 1980 after the nation elected Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly for president over the wishes of that state’s voters, who endorsed President Carter’s re-election. I surely don’t recall that kind of groundswell emerging then. Or how about when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was elected president in 2000 despite losing the popular vote to Vice President Al Gore. That election was settled eventually by a narrow U.S. Supreme Court decision to stop a recount in Florida, where Bush held a 537-vote lead and ended up winning with barely enough electoral votes to claim the presidency. Where were the secessionists then?

No, this idiocy is a recent phenomenon. What’s driving it? The secession crowd says it’s the president’s policies. They say the country is heading in the wrong direction. They want to “take the country back.” But from whom? The majority of Americans who preferred on Nov. 6 to keep the president we have rather than replace him with someone else?

I believe in majority-rule government, even if an election doesn’t go the way I prefer. The secessionist loons ought to sign on to that notion, too.