Free Republic

There’s nothing like a guy with a few million bucks to lend instant credibility to a previously penny-ante movement to split up the state of California. Venture capitalist Tim Draper of Silicon Valley has filed paperwork for a November ballot measure that would divide California into six states, calling the Golden State as presently constituted “too big and bloated.”

In early October, I posted a blog entitled "Dear Texas: Please Secede" that advocated kicking Texas as well as Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and perhaps other Southern states out of the USA because they have an inferior culture and their stupidity and greed has had a negative effect on the nation from Day One. Since then, I have read even more articles about two kinds of secession -- Southern states leaving the USA and rural conservatives in liberal states seeking to form their own state. It's clear that the partisan divide in Washington, D.C., and in numerous states has become so...

There's a big race right now to become the 51st state. Forget traditional contenders like Puerto Rico. In several existing states, residents of less populous areas are hoping to create new states of their own. Citizens in 11 northeastern Colorado counties are among them. They'll vote on Nov. 5 whether to break off and form their own state. Many are unhappy about liberal state legislation they believe reflects the values of the Denver-Boulder corridor, but not their part of the world. "We're rarely listened to when it comes to legislation," says Butch White, the mayor of Ault. "I'm sure the...

(This essay is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, “The Vermont Way: Restless Spirits and Popular Movements”.) The idea of defying the forces of centralized power and wealth can be seductive, especially if you live in a small, isolated place with a reputation for being contrary and the sense that it’s different, even exceptional. In Congress, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders has reflected this perspective, challenging corporate secrecy and the powers of international financial institutions by forging alliances that cross traditional lines. When that strategy was attempted in Vermont during the late 1970s, the two ends of the political spectrum also found...

It goes without saying that Modoc and Siskiyou counties aren’t going to secede from California. Their county supervisors have passed resolutions expressing the desire to form a new State of Jefferson, and by some reports, Shasta, Lassen and Redding counties are considering similar measures. But actual secession would require approval from the state Legislature and Congress, and that’s not a realistic possibility—fortunately for the secessionists. Like many of the state’s remote rural areas, Modoc and Siskiyou have aging populations, high poverty rates and few jobs. They get far more money in state services than they pay in taxes. The government...

Full title: GOP Senate Candidate Addressed Conference Hosted by Neo-Confederate Group That Promotes Secessionism Chris McDaniel is taking the "GOP Civil War" to a new level. Two months ago, the tea party-backed Mississippi Senate candidate addressed a neo-Confederate conference and costume ball hosted by a group that promotes the work of present-day secessionists and contends the wrong side won the "war of southern independence." Other speakers at the event included a historian who believes Lincoln was a Marxist and Ryan Walters, a PhD candidate who worked on McDaniel's first political campaign and wrote recently that the "controversy" over President Barack...

What "Soleri" called the Cold Civil War is underway. The game of shutdown/default chicken, with grave consequences for America's economy and standing in the world, is only the latest manifestation. Although the worst was avoided, it is only a temporary truce. Republican House members representing about 18 percent of the population, were able to hold 100 percent of the nation hostage. There is talk in places such as Texas of secession, and in Arizona and other states of nullification, choosing which federal laws to follow, hearkening back to the crises the preceded the Civil War. But these and the fetish...

The electoral map divides the country neatly into blue states and red states. But blue states include vast conservative stretches; and most red states harbor liberal enclaves, too. In recent years, as partisan polarization has grown, some political minorities in these disaffected areas have proposed a radical solution: state partition. It has happened before. Maine, for instance, was once part of Massachusetts. And while none of the current movements really has a shot, the eleven instances mapped here (including that to grant the District of Columbia statehood) have at least attracted the support of elected officials. What would happen if...

In an argument for statehood, George Sundborg, a newspaper editor who went on to help write the Alaskan constitution, decreed that in the making of the Union, “It seems that Americans no sooner got their feet upon the ground than they wanted to make the ground into a state.” What Sundborg didn’t mention is that sometimes Americans want to take their states and turn them into more states, which is both a current and historical trend. In the 19th century, residents of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan began lobbying for statehood, while in 1915 representatives from Panhandle, Texas, drafted a...

Remember Rick Perry and secession? That’s so yesterday. Ever-quotable lieutenant governor candidate Jerry Patterson says he has a better idea. Texas shouldn’t secede – it should just make the U.S. better by throwing liberal states out. California, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut. “I get lots of questions all the time, ‘Well, we should secede.’ I say, ‘No, I’ve got a better idea. Instead of secession, I’m a proponent of expulsion,’” he told the AP. “I want to kick about four states out of this union.”

Patrick J. Buchanan has raised the question asked here fifteen months ago: Is there a peaceful civil secession of Red States underway? Originally raised here in July 2012, we asked if there wasn’t a real possibility of what we described as a “constructive secession” which would accomplish what The Confederacy could not achieve. As we described the situation those states that have grown tired of the overbearing Barack Obama Administration and see it as no longer intolerable could engage in conduct that would amount to de facto if not a de jure secession from the United States. Red Staters have...

Secession is not just for unreconstructed Confederates anymore. On both the right and the left, Americans increasingly see Washington as the problem and local autonomy as the solution. Despite all the talk, the federal government shutdown hasn’t greatly affected daily life for most Americans so far. Some have been hit hard, especially federal employees, those receiving certain benefit payments, and tourists planning to visit the Smithsonian or a national park. But as apocalypses go, a couple weeks without “non-essential” federal services has been underwhelming for most American families. Things could get worse if the closure were to extend from weeks...

In the last decade of the 20th century, as the Soviet Empire disintegrated so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR. Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia. Transnistria then broke free of Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Georgia. Yugoslavia dissolved far more violently into the nations of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo. The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. Yet a Europe that plunged straight...

Secession fever is spreading. In red and blue pockets of America, disgruntled residents are organizing efforts to split up with their home states, from liberals in southern Arizona to conservatives in rural Colorado and Western Maryland. The biggest obstacle for these movements would seem to be the Constitution, which requires secessionists to get the blessing of their state Legislature and then Congress. There might be an easier way, says Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at Northwestern University, in a provocative post at Volokh Conspiracy. Rather than forming a new “51st” state, how about seceding to join an existing state? SNIP...

The intense political polarization of the United States is most clearly reflected by the dysfunctional nature of the federal government. At a more local scale, it is seen as well in the growing movement to create new states by splitting existing ones. Most of these cases involve the desire of people in rural, conservative counties to secede from the more liberal states in which they are currently located. A front-page story in the October 7 edition of the New York Times, for example, highlights a drive to devise a new state of “Northern Colorado.” Eleven Colorado counties will vote on...

Thanks to a confluence of three events, the S-word — secession — is once again in the air. In Washington, new questions are emerging about whether the United States can function as a unified nation after a partial government shutdown was engineered by a largely regional party — one whose home territory looks eerily similar to the Confederacy. Adding to the questions about the viability of the post-Civil War union is the fact that the shutdown has been orchestrated by a Texas legislator whose state party stalwarts — including its governor — seem to support secession, to the point of...

One way or another, the battle of the budget and the debt ceiling will be over by All Hallows' Eve. Yet, as one looks deeper, at the irreconcilable conflict behind the present clash, only a roaring optimist would imagine we shall ever know again the tranquility and unity of the Eisenhower-Kennedy years. Consider the bile dumped upon Tea Party Republicans by Barack Obama, Harry Reid and their camp followers in the national press. What did the Tea Party do to deserve this? Answer: These extremists shut down the U.S. government, they're holding America hostage, and they're inflicting terrible suffering on...

Republicans have now lost three successive elections to control the Senate, and they've lost the last two presidential elections. Nonetheless, they fought tooth and nail to kill President Obama's health care initiative. They lost that fight, but with the corporate wing of Democrats, they managed to bend it toward private interests. So, we should be here on this: Obamacare, as it is known, is deeply flawed. Big subsidies to the health insurance industry, a bonanza for lobbyists, no public option and, as the New York Times reported this week, "Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law" -- largely...

Conservative activists in five rural Maryland counties are fed up with what they see as the tyranny of a democratically elected state government they don’t control. They’re so frustrated that they want to secede and form their own deep red state. Bizarre as it seems, the effort is part of a trend. In Colorado, up to 10 rural counties want to break off and form a new state called Northern Colorado. A handful of counties in Kansas and Nebraska are reportedly thinking about joining them. Several counties in Northern California are hoping to combine with a chunk of Southern Oregon...

WASHINGTON DC — In some U.S. states, the sharp political rift between Republicans and Democrats is also a geographical divide in which political power is controlled by liberal progressives in heavily populated urban areas. This has left some rural conservatives groups tired of their powerless minority status and looking to secede, not from the country but from the states where they reside. The Western Maryland Initiative is the latest such attempt, joining efforts by groups in Colorado, Michigan and California to attempt to secede from their own states and either form a new state or join with a neighboring state...