A red state-blue state divorce plan: Secessionists, here's how some of us want to divide the country

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune ^ | November 23, 2012 | Paul Vandevelder

[2ndDivisionVet]

We in the blue states hear from the talking heads on Fox News and MSNBC that many of you in the red states are so distressed about the outcome of the elections that you would like to secede from the Union. Now, it seems that at least six of you -- Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina -- have submitted enough signatures (25,000) on petitions to the White House website to merit a formal response, with more petitions on the way.

We wish you the best of luck with this. We feel your pain. If we can speak frankly, it's been coming for a long, long time. The question now is: What's next?

First, we're happy to report that most people here in Oregon, Washington and California think you're really on to something. This marriage has run its course. Too many niggling little things built up over time, driving us all crazy. So let's just stop. It's time to divvy up the china and draft a property settlement. In the spirit of fairness and goodwill, we propose the following as a starting point.

We'll keep the West Coast, Nevada and Hawaii, New York, the rest of the Northeast and all the other states that turned blue on election night. You guys get Texas, Mississippi, the rest of the Confederacy and all the other states that turned red on election night. Alaska can do whatever it wants. It does what it wants anyway.

One caveat here. We've been asked by the citizens of Austin, Texas, to give them sanctuary, so we'll keep Austin as a territorial protectorate, along with Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Samoa, and you can have Key West...

[trebb]

Seceded States are probably the only borders the Feds would try to enforce. Might solve a lot of problems if all the States that abut the Mexican border were involved and then enforced their borders....

[2ndDivisionVet]

So is Florida, but most people today have no idea. Many states thought of as “solidly blue” sent troops to the Confederacy (see Maryland) but there’s no memory of it.

[lentulusgracchus]

Is it any wonder why the South tried to depart this “glorious” union the first time? Who wants to be in the same country as these jerks.

The origin of the word "Yankee", the dictionary tells us, is shrouded in mystery. Bull. It's shrouded in Yankee lexicographers' coyness and bashfulness at translating the original Dutch -- the Dutch went privateering in the 16th and 17th centuries with Yankees and knew them well, and named them -- which I will bet every buck in my left pocket is etymologically and philologically very closely related to the Saxon words "yank" and "wank". Hence your use of the word "jerk" is certainly well-supported.

On contextual and sociological grounds alone, the term points to a meaning somewhere near the intersection of "officious, supercilious, meddling, pushy bastard" and "self-referential, greedy, slippery, grasping s.o.b."

Comments? Discussion?

[lentulusgracchus]

Then, we'll OK prisoner exchanges, we'll swap the entitled non producers trapped in our counties for your producers that you thought ya had trapped like rats.

And we'll import all the Boers to backfill, who are going to get mass-murdered over there anyway. It's better than their having a race war, at least.

We'll clean out Lost Wages and Dingy Harry and his SEIU thugs, and the Boers can have the whole state -- parts of it look like parts of S.A. anyway. Sound like a winner?

[lentulusgracchus]

For example, NY is really quite “red”, except for concentrated pockets of “blue” which outvote them.

My usual suggestion is to start at the state-line swamps and follow the Croton River down to its outfall into the Hudson (this puts Chappaqua, btw, conveniently on the Connecticut/downstate side of the line), and then down the center of the Hudson River channel and canyon out to the toe of the continental rise. (So to do will be necessary to divide mineral rights in the Outer Continental Shelf.)

We get Staten Island, Bedloe's, Ellis Island, and all of Jersey and upstate New York. They get Riker's, the other boroughs, Westchester, and New England. The international boundary would be the New York state line -- up to Lake Champlain, where it'd probably be an idea to split the lake islands carefully.

Then we drop the GW and Tappan Zee bridges into the drink, flood the tunnels, and put a big-ass turnstile on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and call out "Geh veck vom mein Hause!" and break the china. All done.

[lentulusgracchus]

What is stupid about this writer is that almost all of the territory of Washington is red. Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia are blue.

In 1981, WaPo writer Joel Garreau, a born Quebecker, wrote The Nine Nations of North America, about the significant differences among regions and their "natural" boundaries. The Pacific Coast, which he called "Ecotopia", extended from the Alaskan panhandle, inclusive, down to about San Luis Obispo. He saw consistent cultural affinities and geographic realities all along the coast which did not extend inland much farther than Contra Costa County in California but did comprehend most of San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound. In most places, though, the "nome" did not extend beyond the crest of the Coastal Ranges.

[lentulusgracchus]

Soon after separation, the new southern government forms its pro-growth, low corporate tax policy.

That's exactly what precipitated the Civil War and galvanized Northern business opinion, which then cranked up the public through their newspapers.

[MayflowerMadam]

My sis says the conservatives should take over Cuba and move there. Take the true America there. The Cubans would love having their freedom and would assimilate well as liberty-loving citizens.

[Wonder Warthog]

"The secessionist thing is absurd."

Why?? A lot of people on BOTH SIDES think it is a good idea, myself included.

Give the socialists the arc of states down the west coast, along the Canadian border, and the east coast down to the old "Mason-Dixon line". Give the real heirs of the USA the rest.

This gives both "new" nations geographic continuity and access to sea transport.

[jmaroneps37]

“And no hard feelings, but what this means is that we'll own 86 percent of America's venture capital and have 92 percent of the young entrepreneurs. For the first time ever, we'll get to keep 100 percent of our tax revenue (go ahead, look it up), and for the first time ever you'll get the satisfaction of paying for your own schools, hospitals, military bases, bridges, highways, dams and flood control. This may strike you as a real hardship, but trust us on this one: Paying for your own stuff can be incredibly rewarding.”

This snarky piece of shiite REALLY believes that if this happened the ‘86 percent of America's venture capital and have 92 percent of the young entrepreneurs’ would stay in his Blue State gulag! This moron doesn't factor in reality because liberals never do and the snarkier they are the more stupid they get. If this ever happened the ‘makers’ would run out of their plantations faster than you could say “TAX THE RICH.”

[central_va]

To anyone living in a blue state, then yes secession is absurd. However to those of us in “fly over” country it is an option we think about seriously. One day you may have to except you live in a socialist state or vote with your feet.

[Gay State Conservative]

Assuming New Hampshire chooses to side with the Commie States of America (not a sure thing IMO) the only place I could live is North Carolina.I hate heat and humidity so Georgia,etc,etc would be out and the Midwest is a bit too “rural” for me.But I like that map showing all the red states in the middle of the country with the caption “just how much food do they grow inside the beltway?”

[military cop]

ALL the Way.

Thanks.

[MomwithHope]

Looks to me like there will be a natural process (hope it’s accelerated) of cities going bankrupt. These will be blue cities like Detroit in states where most of the rest of the people are conservative. Let them go bankrupt and just stay out of them. The violence will start there.

[Sgt_Schultze]

A reunion would necessitate the concept that a vote follows property ownership, not citizenship.

[ohioman]

I celebrate my Rebel ancestors more than ever these days.F all the detractors. May they all rot in hell! This country needs change and if it’s violent, so be it.

[driftless2]

For one thing the country will not be split up quite the way this moron thinks it will. Most of the blue staters live in concentrated areas especially big cities. They can have L.A., New York, and Chicago. We'll even take over some truly lost cities like Detroit and a number of others, and the current residents can vamoose to a blue city if they so choose.

Most of the farm land and the people who work on them are red state people. Where are they going to get enough people to grow their food? Even if we share the agricultural land like the rest of the nation's resources, the blue staters are going to have to import food.

I'd bet 100% of the leeches on welfare will be blue state residents. The blue state producers will have to satisfy these leeches and the severely undereducated people from where they came. The new blue-socialist country will be populated by the least educated of the current population. Those severely, poorly educated people will comprise about 50% of the blue country population. Good luck with that. Say hello to confiscatory taxes. And when those young entrepreneurs find the state intends to take 90+ percent of what they make, they'll come begging to be let back into the red U.S. As will many more millions who currently vote Dem when they come to their senses and realize they'll be living in a country where multi-millions will be rewarded for sitting on their cans.

The idiot who wrote this piece is a moron, because he thinks all conservatives are anti-science, bible-belters (I personally am not one, but I like them...and I've yet to meet a very religious person who was anti-science), and that all the blue state residents are all 200+ IQ types (like him) who think they will live in a socialist eden. He's especially an idiot for thinking that a socialist economy (which the blue states eventually surely will be sooner than later) can outproduce a free-market one. The final result will not be so nice for them.

[driftless2]

"sequester themselves"

A very good idea sir. Let the quasi-Marxist relive the disastrous socialist experiments of the 20th century on a small scale. The residents of the big, blue cities can run their economies any way they like. Right over the cliff.

[x]

Even though this one is a spoof, the idea has a lot of merit. The country is on the verge of collapse anyhow, and it might be best to break it up before the Chinese lay claim to the ruins of the whole place.

And splitting up the country is going to prevent this? It seems more likely to hasten that very result.

[driftless2]

"what's up"

Norwegians, that's what. A somewhat coterminus area of western Wisconsin, s eastern Minn, n eastern Iowa, and N western Illinois is populated by large numbers of Norwegian descendants of whom many vote Dem. This phenomenon has already been noticed by a writer for the Milwaukee-Journal/Sentinel.