Posted on 04/05/2010 5:15:07 PM PDT by Kaslin
Ten years ago I asked the following question in a column titled "It's Time To Part Company":
"If one group of people prefers government control and management of people's lives and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?"
The problem that our nation faces is very much like a marriage where one partner has broken, and has no intention of keeping, the marital vows. Of course, the marriage can remain intact and one party tries to impose his will on the other and engage in the deviousness of one-upmanship. Rather than submission by one party or domestic violence, a more peaceable alternative is separation.
I believe we are nearing a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them.
The Democrat-controlled Washington is simply an escalation of a process that has been in full stride for at least two decades. There is no evidence that Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have any intention of mending their ways.
You say, "Williams, what do you mean by constitutional abrogation?" Let's look at just some of the magnitude of the violations.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Yes.
I’m in favor of it! The US will have a sea of Red surounding islands of blue cities. Red will control the food production, energy production, water, gas and everything else that is shipped to a blue city.
Wall them in and listen to them squeal like a bunch of rats as they devour each other!
I’ve been thinking about this proposal for quite some time, but it doesn’t get any easier to digest.
First of all, the division is real. No matter how many of us want and demand a return to the Constitution, limited government, a civilized tax burden and the God-given freedoms we all deserve, a large percentage of our countrymen (and very possibly our own government) do not.
Put up THE BEST conservative candidate you can find, against THE WORST liberal socialist (oh wait, that’s Obama) and the vote will still come down to 51-49, or maybe 54-46 if it’s a real blowout. That isn’t overwhelming, folks! There is a HUGE percentage of our population that adamantly and vehemently disagrees with our beliefs, our values and even religion itself. They will never surrender and they will always fight us over every little issue. Always.
So let’s say we do split the country. For argument sake only, let’s use the Mississippi River as the demarcation line. Everything east of the river is liberal, everything to the west is conservative. (Relax, this is just theoretical.)
I live in Massachusetts so I am completely screwed. How do I get out of this blue hell-hole? Do I trade my house with somebody from Arizona? Do we set up a national clearinghouse for home-traders?
I like my house and my neighborhood and I don’t want to leave. Do we set up “protected” blue enclaves in red states and vice versa? I can’t find a solution that works, we are surrounded by enemies, and we are rapidly running out of time.
I believe our only hope is for individual states to reassert their sovereignty. They must declare loyalty to the king or declare independence. No other choice. The states have tried to avoid taking sides but the “middle ground” is quickly becoming squishy and untenable.
That means We The People need to focus our political attention on our state governments. There is a chance we can fix at least part of the federal problem IF we still get to vote in November, and IF we get some candidates worth voting for, and IF the voting process hasn’t been totally corrupted by ACORN and its friends, and IF amnesty doesn’t dilute our voting power with 20 million new single-issue voters. Then maybe we can start taming the beast in Washington, but I’m not holding my breath.
I honestly believe we are headed toward a cliff and we’re rapidly accelerating. Six months is all the time we have left. Good luck and godspeed, America.
You take the DC teat away and they leave.....they will self deport.
Belgium is indeed split into Sam Adams divisions, socialist Wallonia in the South and Flanders in the North, and the King has had to deal with a possible actual split. For the home of the European Union, Brussels is politically schizophrenic.
A wonderful, detailed series on the extensive contributions of the Flemish to the Pilgrims and thereafter is presented here with Part one of a six part series:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4029
The Brussels Journal can be searched for the current Belgium experience in dealing with a similar issue as presented by this article.
No sense of being surrounded, Pick a coast and claim it.
This is not an answer to the question being posed, but an observation.
IF the States were able to walk it all back and regain their ability to actually be States, not just administrative pass-throughs for unfunded federal mandates, and IF the federal government actually was limited to pretty much providing for national security, some national standards on commerce, some national interstate highways, etc., the States would evolve their own identities in much more detail and they would naturally attract like-minded people and naturally repel the others.
Say if Virginia were able to get rid of the federal government’s role in education altogether and go totally to a state-controlled system. And the citizens of Virginia wanted school vouchers, so everybody — from border to border — got a voucher and had complete choice to apply to any school in Virginia. After a while, a very new type of education and educational system would emerge. And people who wanted that would say, hey, let’s move to Virginia. And those who wanted the old government schools would say, time to jump in the Yugo and head back to Massachusetts.
Imagine if there were very few federal taxes, so a state’s taxing structure really made a difference. You would see people moving to states that had their preferred level of taxation and government services.
The point of all this is that, had the federal government never gotten so out of control that it completely squeezed out a state’s ability to create its own style of government and, really, culture, we wouldn’t be having this question. There would be no need to ask whether the states should split from the union.
It would be an individual’s decision to try to move to a state that worked for them, and there would be all kinds of state environments from which to choose. Some would be welfare states through and through, so long as they could continue to fund it. Others would be minimalist in terms of government provision of services and regulation, with an emphasis on wide-open freedom and private, not State, action. But, unlike now, you really would have a choice.
Good catch!
As I said (in a regrettably long-winded post upthread), it would be easy to make this happen. Simply limit the federal government to the bare minimum and allow the States to run themselves any way they choose. Then if you want to live in a "work" state and get a job there, that's where you live. If you want to live in a "welfare" state and can qualify for the dole there, that's where you live.
Of course, we have "work" and "welfare" states to some extent now. It's just that in the new system, a "welfare" state would have to come up with most of its own funding, from the citizens of that state. It wouldn't be able to rob the other states by way of the federal government.
So, actually, we don't need a 2-state solution. We need a 50-state solution.
Clearly not.
It’s simply not possible to separate socialists from a free society... because they are more expansive than capitalists... and yet so dependent upon the very system they seek to destroy.
If we were to split along ideological lines, with liberals on one side, and conservatives on the other, The liberals would move into the conservative side and start the whole process over again.... and in the long haul, complete loss of capitalism in favor of socialism would result.
Why? because they would have succeeded in the time tested tactic of:
DIVIDE AND CONQUER!
Divide it down the middle.... east of the Mississipi to the liberals, illegals, and Muslims, west of the Mississipi to the conservatives.
Of course that means a large volkwanderung of southeastern conservatives to the 50 wide strip along the Pacific coast which will be depopulated by departing liberals. And good riddance — California was paradise when I was a kid, and if the good Southron folk can help us restore it — y’all are most welcome, dudes.
Make sure the damn democratic states get to keep their damn debt and millions of “public servants”... with the exception of military personnel who want to come with us and bring their toys.
This happens so much already. The Northeastern libs flee Massachusetts at the first available opportunity because they don't like the high taxes. They move to N.C. or Florida and, whatdyaknow, before you know it they are voting Socialist down there, too.
Ancient Ireland had an advanced level of culture, literacy, religion, enlightened laws, music, poetry, philosophy, real (non-leftist) social justice, etc - WITHOUT CITIES. Cities were not built til the Vikings arrived in the Middle Ages. It is possible to be highly cultured, educated, and moral without being "civilized" (=cityfied).
Red zones grow almost all the food. The ultimate logistical advantage.
Hear! Hear! There's nothing wrong with telling Washington D.C. you want a divorce. 200+ years was a nice enough marriage but now she's turned into a nagging old shrew that's unliveable to be around.
I want a divorce and there's no reason why a settlement can't be peacefully arranged.
Think of it like a business that divests itself of one of its strongest assets in order to keep the rest of the company afloat. The new country would subsidize a fair share of the debt to buy its freedom from the tyranny of Washington (to obtain federal land, military installations, equipment for air traffic control, etc.) and, in doing so, provide another object lesson as to whether capitalism or communism is the superior form of government.
It was already tried in East Germany vs. West Germnay and we all know which system survived. But the liberals want to make Washington and the country the new East Germany, so I say let's re-enact this experiment all over again and see which economic model endures.
This is why I say the easiest, most efficient, and actually constitutional way to accomplish this is to do it state by state.
If the federal government were actually limited the way it should be, a lot less tax money would be going to the feds and a lot more would be available to the states — to use ONLY within that state.
Then the citizens of that state would have a lot more say-so in both the level of (state) taxation and the level of state-provided government services.
You could have some kind of minimal way to have the federal government continue to fund the urban welfare enclaves — face it, we can never get completely out from under these entitlement programs. But states could make it very difficult for new people to be added to the dole. Then states could come up with their own ways to help the truly poor — who knows, maybe even a return to reliance on private (targeted and accountable) charity.
As the states more and more developed their own way of doing things, and became relatively more or less attractive to either workers or welfarists, they could refine law and policy to encourage the former and discourage the latter from emigrating. I say let ‘em have socialism in California if that’s what they want AND the rest of us don’t have to pay one dime for it.
Haven’t read all the posts so if these are repeat questions I apologize.
Where’s our Capitol going to be?
How do we relocate the Obama maniacs from the red states to the blue states?
Remember: Ticks follow the blood supply so...we of course will have to fire up our gun factories and defense companies to full throttle!!
But this is exactly what our Constitution was designed to do -- keep stupid policies from taking over the entire Republic by limiting the federal government's ability to rob from one state to give to another.
So all we have to do is have a massive return of states' rights. Let the Libs huddle together in their welfare states until the money, which would come only (or mostly) from that state, runs out. Then they figure out what to do next. Which would not include forcing people from other states to pay their bills.
Meanwhile, the worker (free) states would be getting richer and richer, and freer and freer.
I think the Freedom loving States of this Federation need to get together in a separate manner, separate from congress and deliver the rest of the U.S.A. the tyrant’s an ultimatum:
Either Respect our rights to be left alone and govern ourselves, or we will seek separation from you, and if that leads to violence and bloodshed we are committed to defend our rights no matter the cost.
But we will no longer remain subjects of your unrestricted tyranny! We will either be free State along sides you in peace or in a war.
Start small until we reestablish the proper balance between the federal government and the states under the Constitution. For example, give immediate and complete control of education to the states. This would so completely change the economy and culture of the states that people would start to emigrate to and emulate the states with successful results.
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