George Rebane

I think Union publisher Jim Hemig gets it.  This morning’s (6mar15) Union has another piece by Hemig in which he supports the 12may15 presentation to our Board of Supervisors on the movement to create the new State of Jefferson.  After some pretty deep heel marks on the floor, the persistent efforts of Mr Eddie Garcia and Nevada County’s SoJ Steering Committee paid off.  Supervisor Ed Scofield, the Board’s new chairman, had the wherewithal to convince some of his more recalcitrant colleagues to sit still and hear what all norCal’s SoJ fuss has been about from the involved people creating the fuss.  (Full disclosure: Jo Ann and I are supporters of the SoJ movement and the effort in Nevada County.)

The county’s Right is still a bit confused about SoJ, and our leftwing neighbors are turning purple at the thought of anyone opposing socialist Sacramento.  A reasoned presentation to the Board that is accurately covered by our local media should clear the air and let people get informed on the facts of the matter.  After that let the debate continue with all the gusto that such a question deserves.

But what again is illustrating the difference between our local collectivists and conservatives is that the Left opposes SoJ on their bedrock principle of a cohesive state – specifically, if you are different or have different ideas than promoted by the state, then keep them to yourself, else you will be accused of polarizing our community.  In short, the politically correct deportment of a good citizen and their well-behaved electeds is to go along to get along with what the state’s majority has installed in Sacramento.

What our Left does not want to understand is that there are still a sizeable number of people in this state who want nothing to do with the groupthink of socialism that now permeates our government and schools.  I am one of those who would not want my silence to be mistaken for agreement with the powers that be and their local chorus seeking to infect us with their ‘San Francisco values’.  The success of these progressives is very much abetted by certain of our elected leaders who like us to see them as middle roaders or a bit right of center but still moderate.  They speak to those of us who don’t understand the intricate realities of governance from that unassailable pedestal of pragmatic reason on which is inscribed ‘Since we are powerless, what else can we do?’

Opposing such languid comfort zones of our electeds are groups like the Tea Party, and now the State of Jefferson movement – and this is Americana at its historical finest.  We have gone to school, we do study the Constitution and our Founders, many of us have lived in different times and climes, we realize that our values and mores no longer hold sway in the halls of government, and we are left with calls for compliance with a state that at all levels is indifferent to our concerns or has gone rogue.

The bottom line of national movements like our SoJ is that American minorities have always agitated to be heard and have their complaints addressed.  The Left’s longstanding assault on federalism is now in high gear with three generations of government school dumbth flooding the land.  ‘Democracy’ is touted and targeted to mop up the last vestiges of dissent against what is now openly promoted as an ongoing fundamental transformation of America.  Yet there are still many of us who want no such fundamental transformation that we see happening daily.  We believe that the mainstay of the Great Experiment our Founders left us must be and still is an enduring federalism wherein the several states manage their own affairs and set their own courses to demonstrate the variations of liberal governance to the benefit of their citizens and the nation at large.

Whether we believe that the SoJ will come to pass or not does not matter.  The SoJ movement is the only ongoing effort to communicate that a significant fraction of the state’s citizens, especially in its rural counties, have become a disenfranchised minority.  This is the result of the states’ populations having grown beyond the size and scope that can perpetuate the governing principles of the democratic republic which is supposed to be America.  In the aggregate we are now a thoroughly gruberized (q.v.) citizenry, championed by the Left and diverted by government bread and circuses from perceiving, let alone understanding, the globally compliant direction in which we are being herded.

[7mar15 update]  Mr Eddie Garcia of the NC SoJ Steering Committee wrote a piece – The State of Jefferson – claims versus facts – responding to Mr George Boardman’s recent column on SoJ.  Access to both may be behind The Union’s paywall, a practice that I wish they would cease with their op-ed articles, at least the ones they get gratis from local columnists and commentators.