After sixty days of what was surely careful rumination, the White House issued a response to secession petitions of eight states, including Texas.

The Texas secession petition on “We the People” amassed the required 25,000 signatures to trigger a White House response on November 12. Jon Carson, director of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement, penned the response, titled “Our States Remain United” which was posted on Friday evening:

In a nation of 300 million people — each with their own set of deeply-held beliefs — democracy can be noisy and controversial. And that’s a good thing. Free and open debate is what makes this country work, and many people around the world risk their lives every day for the liberties we often take for granted.

But as much as we value a healthy debate, we don’t let that debate tear us apart.

Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States “in order to form a more perfect union” through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot — a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it.

Carson invoked a decision of the Supreme Court after the Civil War, which confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”

Carson went on to encourage the public to engage with the Obama Administration through various channels, including the “We the People” website.

The response addressed petitions from South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. The Lone Star State amassed 125,746 signatures, a full 86,000 more than the next state, Louisiana.

At the Slatest, Josh Voorhees quipped that “the White House is on a dream-crushing roll lately,” having rejected states’ secession petitions and a petition calling on the government to construct a Death Star.

There was no chatter about the response the Texas Nationalist Movement‘s Facebook page as of Monday afternoon. Instead, most of the debate was centered around whether or not Mexico would invade an independent Texas.