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Two months after President Obama’s re-election unleashed a torrent of trollish longing for states to be permitted to leave the United States, the White House made good on its pledge to respond to the secession petitions that reached the requisite number of signatures on its “We the People” site.

The answer, shortly, is that no, the states whose petitions achieved more than 25,000 signatures will not be allowed to turn away from the union. In the days following last November’s presidential election, in which Obama beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney by a decisive margin, sore feelings led people in every state to launch a White House petition seeking secession. Texas led the pack, eventually collecting more than 125,000 signatures; calls for South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana also gained enough signatures for an official response.

Now, much as we might not care of some of those states disappeared overnight, disunion is not what the Obama administration seeks to preside over in its second term. But the rebellious reaction to the presidential election, a White House official writes, is a reminder of the nation’s dynamic politics:

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.

That comes from Jon Carson, the White House’s director of public engagement, who goes on to remind readers that the last time states quit the union, the result wasn’t pretty:

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. As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.” In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”

That Supreme Court case, by the way, was Texas v. White, in which the sale of antebellum U.S. Treasury bonds by Texas’ rebel government was nullified, thereby making states themselves inseparable from the union.

So, no matter what our feelings about the states that garnered enough signatures on their secession petitions, we’re stuck with them. But the fact that the debate still wages on 148 years after the end of the Civil War? (And after Lincoln gets mostly shut out at the Golden Globes?) Well, Carson thinks that validates the petition site.

“In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of the We the People platform is a chance to engage directly with our most outspoken critics,” he writes. Sure, it’s a great tool. Because there’s nothing like a gripping debate over the most pressing issues of the day.

Such as whether the U.S. government should compel states to adopt official state Pokémons, which currently has the backing of more than 700 signers.