Is that trouble on the wind, or just my breath?

Instapundit linked to the Chicago Boys blog where they had a fairly interesting discussion of this whole idea of the blue states secceceding to form their own all liberal, all the time nation:

So seeing maps with "Jesusland" and "United States of Canada"
should not surprise us. It is the traditional Anglospheric way
of thinking out loud about how to resolve seemingly irreconcilable
differences. One way is to leave, physically, for some new place
-- "light out for the territories", or "go West", or as Davey Crocket
put it "you people can go to Hell; I'm going to Texas". And if there
are too many dissatisfied people for this method to work, there is
pressure to re-deal the cards on who runs which pieces of real estate.

Thankfully, for now, any proposed division of territory is merely
political satire. But secession thinking is often the first straw in the
wind of a storm of deeper conflict coming up.


I have several thoughts when I see cartoons separating this country into 'US of C' and 'jesusland'. One of them is that hopefully this will all blow over after a couple of months and the supporters of the losing side get used to the results of the election. Another thought is that if a large group of people can't accept the recent election and is actually considering radical action, then democracy in the U.S. is mostly dead. Since the most basic requirement of a democracy is that the losing side accepts the result of the election, goes into opposition and works within the rules to try to win the next election. If the losers will always threaten seccession, or violence then this will become the modus operandi of all parties until we reach the last election, and some powerful faction such as the military feels slighted and nulifies the election.

My third thought on this topic, which about as many as I can handle since I need two fingers to hold my beer, is that seccession and violence and ugly cartooning aren't really necessary. Each state having their own views on various social topics is already provided for in the federal structure of the government as originally intended. We need to be moving away from the all powerful federal government, and back to states legislating social issues the way their residents want, instead of judges making national policy. Yeah, gay marriage in california is fine. And bible thumping non-drinking in public is fine for mississippi. The gun nuts can all move here to texas. Free abortions for all in masacheusetts. I guess I'll have to get myself a mo-bile home.



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