California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has given the green
light for CalExit proponents to begin collecting signatures for
a California secession ballot initiative in the 2018 general election.
This is good news. California is the logical place to begin
having a conversation about secession, and every red state American should be
actively supporting the proposal.
As California goes, so goes Oregon and Washington, and in the
not so distant future perhaps Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, and
New Hampshire. Maybe Hawaii might finally get the chance to regain its
independence.
One can dream.
What would this mean for red state America?
Imagine a world without Senators Pocahontas, Crazy Bernie, Diane
Feinstein, or Kamala Harris?
Add to that list Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, and even Susan
Collins and the Congress becomes a much more hospitable place.
Imagine all the red state people living in peace with no Deep
North or West Coast hell.
It’s easy if you try.
Would the Congress be perfect? No. There would still be a host
of neocons taking up space. They can be more problematic than the Democrats in
regard to foreign policy, but certainly issues such as immigration, the welfare
state, taxes, fiscal restraint, healthcare, abortion and a host of other hot
button topics would take a decided turn in the direction of real federalism.
The Senate would be split 51-31 and the House 220-126. Those are
not super majorities but close.
The left would be reduced to an insignificant other in red state
politics. In fact, you could envision a mass exodus of American pinkos pulling
up stakes and moving to the grand west coast socialist utopia or its cousin in
the Deep North.
Red state
America would look a lot more like real America. Chuck Thompson quipped the North would be
better off without the red states. I think it’s the other way around. Heck,
many Southerners might even like the United States flag again. It would be free
from the stain of Yankee invasion.
The irony, of course, is that only the North could pull this off
in modern America. Their “treasury of counterfeit virtue” allows them the
ability to say good riddance to the hayseeds in fly over country. Always being
on the “right side of history” gets you bonus points in the world of emotivist
politics.
And it was the North not the South that agitated for secession
first. Oliver Ellsworth and Rufus King told John Taylor of Caroline they wanted
out in 1794. Taylor was shocked, but perhaps he should have asked how Virginia
could help. It would have solved nearly eighty years of unnecessary conflict
and kept New England from bloviating about secession in 1801, 1804, 1815, and
1848. They just never had the stones to pull it off. As usual, the South acted
while New England debated.
The key word, though, is “unnecessary.”
Wouldn’t it be better to leave one another alone rather than
trying to bully each other into submission?
We were supposed to learn that lesson in primary school (that’s
what it used to be called before Red Republican Carl Schurz gave us
“kindergarten” and the Yankees “elementary school”) or from our mothers and
grandmothers. Maybe the anti-secessionists never got the memo.
Either way, decentralization is the more humane and polite thing
to do. If we can’t see eye to eye, a peaceful divorce is preferable to a
hostile marriage.
Family court is full of these stories. Every American gets it on
a personal level, so why can’t it be expanded on a larger scale?
The answer is that Americans have been taught that secession is
illegal and the “Civil War” solved the issue. Even the CalExit folks believe
that it would require a constitutional amendment to secede.
Tell that to the founding generation, Ellsworth and King among
them, who thought secession was not only moral but entirely legal and possible.
Just read the Declaration of Independence.
Some suggest this would weaken security or destroy the American
financial sector and ruin the economy.
News
flash, the American economy is already in the tank. Federal bankruptcy is not
too far in the distant future.
As for security, wouldn’t it be possible for these new
confederacies to work out a mutual protection pact if any were invaded by a
foreign power? Red state Americans have spilled a lot of blood in wars
throughout United States history, most of which did not concern their immediate
wellbeing.
So red state America, here is our opportunity to rid real
America from the cancer to the west and north.
The California attorney general has gotten the ball rolling. Red
state America should not only push it along, it should become the most vocal
CalExit cheerleaders.
Give me an S E C E S S I O N. What’s that spell? Secession!
After all, Dean could become president of some northern
confederation.
It could keep him. We’ll keep our guns and Bibles.
And we’ll wave at one another, peacefully, across the border.
Brion
McClanahan [send him mail] holds a Ph.D. in American
history from the University of South Carolina and is a faculty member at Tom Woods's
Liberty Classroom. He is the author or co-author of seven
books, including the forthcoming How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America (Regnery
History, 2017) and 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to
Save Her (Regnery History, 2016). Get your
pre-order bonuses at www.blamehamilton.comand find him at www.brionmcclanahan.com.
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