George Rebane
Eight counties in northeastern Colorado are looking at the possibility of becoming the nation’s 51st state. Like so many idyllic locales in the country, Colorado’s population corridor along the eastern slope of the Rockies has been successfully invaded by progressives immigrating from places like California where they have managed to soil their own nest. And like in California, huge sections of Colorado now suffer taxation and regulation without representation from Denver. So, these eight counties are exploring ways to again become free to pursue their own ideas of life, liberty, and property.
RR readers are familiar with the Great Divide debate that is growing across America as socialism’s autocracy reaches its tentacles into the last lairs of self-reliance and entrepreneurship. (See the Great Divide category link in the right panel.) The Colorado Eight are just the latest jurisdictions to express their yearning for a future not destined for a coerced comprehensive collectivism. (more here, and google ‘8 counties, Colorado’)
These eight counties may be on to something that can help preserve the Union, albeit in a restructured way that allows the Great Experiment bequeathed by our Founders to continue. To the idea of breakaway counties forming their own state (a la West Virginia), I offer that restructuring could come about in certain cases where such counties abut a neighboring state more congenial to the culture and values of such disenchanted populations. In the case of Colorado, these eight counties might consider appealing to Wyoming, if such a realignment is mutually attractive.
Here in California most of the more sparsely populated inland counties already stand raped by regulations from Sacramento and Washington. We have little in common with the liberal legions that dominate the coastal areas, and the two big metropolitan regions of the state. The new state of Sierra(?) is beginning to look better by the day.
There is no guarantee that such a restructuring will work because socialism is a disease powered by ideological evangelism – ‘We know what’s best for you, or else.’ And it spreads virally, appealing to the under-educated with promises of redistribution and through co-opting public education to manufacture more of the under-educated. But then again, we can dream …
[31jul13 update] For completeness, this contribution to RR’s Great Divide category was meant to elicit inputs from the Left that illustrate what drives such a notion of self-governance in the America of the 21st century. As of this writing it has done so in spades.
While the main implication of the Great Divide has been some new form of the Union that may include restructuring itself as a confederation of groups of more ideologically cohesive states, some considerable number of Americans have also actively been advancing proposals for the secession of their several states. Dr Walter Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, writes in ‘Secession: It’s Constitutional’ –
Since Barack Obama’s re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitioners for secession have reached the White House. Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861.
Secession has again emerged as an active topic of discussion on governance among Americans who reflect on the progress of the Great Experiment while we scale historical heights of ideological polarity as a nation. In response to the pro/con commentaries and initiatives surrounding this issue, the Left has become apoplectic, as we will soon examine. But before we get there I’d like to add to the record a thoughtful essay on the matter by historian Brion McClanahan in which he examines ‘Is Secession Legal?’
So, where are we on this current posting? First, let’s recall that the topic I introduced above and wished readers to consider is not secession, but instead the alternative of restructuring the Union as is being variously proposed today, most recently in the reported eight counties of Colorado. What I wanted to illustrate by this piece is the major force that motivates tens of millions of Americans to now openly talk about such initiatives and examine ways of achieving a more perfect Union. And that force is the response of the Left which arises out of their profound ignorance about the workings of a democracy, especially as it has exercised itself over the life of this democratic republic. An example of such a response has now presented itself in the comment stream.
While not being unique in any sense as evidenced by his like-minded brethren, I’d like to highlight the comments of Mr Steven Frisch on this topic (here and over the years elsewhere in these pages). I pick on Steven Frisch because of the sustained virulence of his remarks (aka attacks) that illustrate the progressive mentality about the notion of the Great Divide. As the CEO of a politically and ideologically active NGO, Mr Frisch is also viewed by many progressives hereabouts as being a leading intellect in their midst so that his words may be taken to represent a sort of pinnacle of thinking from that considerable quarter.
Nevertheless, from his remarks over the years we find that he is poorly read, for he keeps ignoring the national mood on the Great Divide and believes that the entire notion is a hare-brained idea cooked up by yours truly, alone on a forested ridge in our backwoods community. As do all progressives looking for a fundamental transformation of America, he believes himself to be the true patriot and a cut above the rest. From his commentary we see that he considers himself beyond enquiry about another’s arguments, and gratuitously supplies what others have really said and thought. It is with those convenient strawmen that he likes to do battle, and over whom he then celebrates his victories.
His profound ignorance of American history and questions of constitutionality is about on par with the cohort he represents. Samplings from such ignorance adorn his main thrust, which for reasons beyond specious is to attack the messenger for even daring to raise the topic of the Great Divide.
In his diatribe you will note that he has not understood the subject of the post, or what are the sentiments of the Coloradans in the eight counties. In his auto-apoplectic state he instead quotes the oath taken by naturalized citizens like me, impugning that somehow introducing commentary and providing a discussion forum for what is going on in the country is treasonous and lese majesty to everything American. And then ascending ever higher on the steps of hubris, he again invites me to go back to Estonia – “you can renounce your American citizenship and get the hell out of my country.”
Did you notice the “my country”? In his froth he overlooks that he was born into MY country, for I was an American before him, and those like me worked hard to preserve and present him with a nation that he and his are now deconstructing.
But perhaps the real pinnacle of his ignorance is his sneering counsel to salve the grievances of the hundreds of thousands of American petitioners, including the Coloradans, by advising them, “I would have them vote George. I would have them vote.” This as if these people have not been voting desperately all of their lives.
What the Frisches of America don’t understand is that carelessly tended democracies come to a time in their evolution at which a minority becomes permanently disenfranchised. In short, a point is passed after which voting no longer works as the proponents and recipients of ever more comprehensive wealth transfer pogroms irrevocably tip the scales. I believe, with accelerating technology, public education in the toilet, and systemic unemployment growing, that we may be past that point now.
What puts paid to this assessment is the unfettered control that the leftwing elites exert on an electorate with a huge and growing component of oblivians and the un/under-educated. Nevertheless, there are at least one hundred million Americans who see the country as having gone terribly wrong, and who are desperately seeking ways to bring back the American dream which is no longer known nor shared by the majority.
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