George Rebane

Various ways to devolve the United States are on the minds of more and more people as Obama’s grab and spend juggernaut gathers steam.  RR readers are familiar with this notion under the label of the ‘Great Divide’ which was most recently described in ‘Follow the Federal Money to the Great Divide’ on 21feb09.  Now the 13jun09 WSJ, one of the world’s leading newspapers, features a banner article on the secessionist organizations and movements across the nation.  ‘Divided We Stand’ by Paul Starobin is an eye-opening summary of how different parts of the country have been reacting to the growing autocracy from Washington.  After all, our Founders did anticipate that this state of affairs might arise, wrote about it extensively, and enshrined contingency plans in our Constitution.  And Obama may be just the man to pull the trigger on this.  Starobin observes –

There might be an austere Republic of New England, with a natural strength in higher education and technology; a Caribbean-flavored city-state Republic of Greater Miami, with an anchor in the Latin American economy; and maybe even a Republic of Las Vegas with unfettered license to pursue its ambitions as a global gambling, entertainment and conventioneer destination. California? America’s broke, ill-governed and way-too-big nation-like state might be saved, truly saved, not by an emergency federal bailout, but by a merciful carve-up into a trio of republics that would rely on their own ingenuity in making their connections to the wider world. And while we’re at it, let’s make this project bi-national—economic logic suggests a natural multilingual combination between Greater San Diego and Mexico’s Northern Baja, and, to the Pacific north, between Seattle and Vancouver in a megaregion already dubbed “Cascadia” by economic cartographers.

Doing their best to help Washington move American sentiment in this direction is the MSM – our vaunted Fourth Estate.  Libertarian John Ziegler produced ‘Media Malpractice’, a documentary on the media’s role in Obama’s election, making a compelling case for its ‘death of journalism’ thesis.  The DVD contains extensive use of video and audio clips, and ends with a provocative challenge for the Left to put together a similar pro-MSM apologetic.  Pay particular attention to the results of the Zogby and Wilson Research polls.