“Yep. And I want to keep my national parks and forests and other federal lands if/when the Calexiters exit.”
They ain’t yours, California can and should pay for the land. But we ain’t got a right to claim solverty over land we simply own but don’t live on or near.
That defis the most basic printable of self government that the sovereignty of any given land belongs to the people who live there.
To say otherwise would let distant California rule Chicago with whatever ridicules rules they might choose never having to live under them in Illinois.
The federal government, particularly the Department of the Interior, consistently speaks of its lands as the common heritage of all Americans for all Americans to enjoy. I will take them for their word on that. The federal government owns and controls those lands. As a federal taxpayer whose contributions go to support and preserve those lands and monuments, I do have a claim on those places as mine, just as any other taxpaying citizen has.
I would be more sympathetic to your points, and especially how California can and should pay for the lands, if the left in California had been conducting themselves differently over the years. Their congressional delegation can take its fair share of the blame for the damage it has inflicted on the rest of the country from Washington. The California left clearly expects to have the final word on the outcome of presidential elections. They don’t mind monkeying with the electoral college and reduce the influence of much of the rest of the country to do so. So they didn’t get their way in the election and now they want to leave? If they are successful in leaving, I say let’s make it as painful as possible.