Last week, Texas’ new governor, Greg Abbott, announced what was arguably the most militaristic anti-government action taken by a U.S. governor since the Civil War. Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to muster in Bastrop County this summer to protect local residents while United States troops, including Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, conduct training exercises there. The governor’s orders instructed the Guard to ensure that Bastrop County residents’ “safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed.”

Abbott took the action in response to a wave of anti-U.S. paranoia sweeping the Lone Star State, where right-wingers have become convinced that the U.S. Special Operations Command exercises, dubbed “Jade Helm 15,” constitute a false-flag invasion by the United States, after which Washington will put the state under martial law. Texas tea partyists and other extremists also believe that a half-dozen defunct Wal-Mart stores are being repurposed by FEMA as processing facilities for political prisoners. They believe these prisoners will then be transported to parts unknown in train cars they say are already equipped with shackles.

Gov. Abbott’s order has earned him the ridicule of Democrats and even some Republicans in Texas. For example, former GOP state Rep. Todd Smith wrote the governor, accusing him of “pandering to idiots.” Describing himself as “livid,” Smith wrote, “I am horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my governor doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to those who do.”

Less surprisingly, the governor also found himself the target of mockery by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” Stewart said he found it “adorable” that Abbott thought the State Guard could take on the U.S. Military. “It’s like a little dog growling at a big dog,” Stewart said, “or an eight-year-old picking a fight with the Predator.” Stewart also reminded Abbott that, “The United States government already controls Texas, since like the 1840s, and then left and then came back — just borrow a textbook from a neighboring state, it’s all in there.”

Yesterday Gov. Abbott attempted to recast his provocation against U.S. forces as an effort to improve communications between Texans and the U.S. military. “We are playing a pivotal role of government,” he told reporters, “and that is to provide information to people who have questions … It’s clear that people in Bastrop had questions.”

About the conspiracy theories that drove him to call out the Guard, Abbott said he has “seen nothing that would cause anybody to worry about what is going on.” He also attempted to walk back his saber-rattling. “I frankly think that there was an overreaction to the simple fact that someone has to be in charge of gathering and disseminating information,” he said, “and we stepped in to play that role, which is a role to be applauded. What the letter did was quite simple and non-inflammatory, and I think that’s the way it should be construed.”

If Abbott’s objective had been simply to facilitate communication between his constituents and the U.S. military, he would have sent in a public-relations team, not armed troops under his command. It was a reckless, foolhardy act. The Texas Guard has a force of just 2,200 troops who serve in Army, Air, Maritime and Medical brigades. They would stand no chance against the full force and might of the United States military.

Secession has been a hot topic in Texas over the past few years. Abbott’s predecessor, Gov. Rick Perry, made a couple of statements construed to suggest he believed Texas could leave the Union. “When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic,” Perry told a group of right-wing bloggers in 2009. “We were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave any time we want … So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”

Perry later suggested he was joking. When a reporter asked him about it, he said, “if Washington continues to thumb their [sic] nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that?” He immediately cleaned that up, too, by adding that, “we’ve got a great union” and there is “no reason to dissolve it.”

Perry’s “joke” was based on a belief among many Texans that the state has a unique right to secede granted in the 1845 Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States. In fact, that right is a “myth,” acccording to Walter L. Buenger, a professor of history at Texas A&M University and author of the book “Secession and the Union in Texas,” who was interviewed by Factcheck.org about the issue in 2011.

In a perfect world, if Texas were to continue these military provocations, perhaps the Congress will allow it to secede peacefully. Failing that, Congress might consider expelling Texas from the Union. Expulsion of states is not contemplated in the Constitution, so cutting Texas loose would require passing an Amendment.

Expelling Texas, it turns out, is not a new idea. In 2012, a petition was opened on the White House website to “Violently Expel the State of Texas from the United States of America and to Exile All Tea Party ‘Tards to Texas.” It failed to get the signatures required to trigger action by the Obama Administration. In fact, only six people signed it.

If Gov. Abbott pulls the trigger in this confrontation with the United States and orders the Texas Guard to take offensive action against American forces this summer, expelling Texas could become a proposition worth reconsidering.