WT: Blue states buzz over secession

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041109-122753-5113r.htm

Blue states buzz over secession

By Joseph Curl

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Secession, which didn't work very well when it was tried once before, is suddenly red hot in the blue states. In certain precincts, anyway.

One popular map circulating on the Internet shows the 19 blue states won by Sen. John Kerry — Washington, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Maryland and the Northeastern states — conjoined with Canada to form the "United States of Canada." The 31 red states carried by Mr. Bush are depicted as a separate nation dubbed "Jesusland."

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The idea isn't just a joke; one top Democrat says, "The segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government."

"Some would say, 'Oh, poor Alabama. It's cut off from the wealth infusion that it gets from New York and California,' " said Lawrence O'Donnell, a veteran Democratic insider and now senior political analyst at MSNBC. "But the more this political condition goes on at the presidential level of the red and blue states, the more you're testing the inclination of the blue states to say, 'So what?' "

Mr. O'Donnell raised the subject of secession on "The McLaughlin Group" during the weekend. "Ninety percent of the red states are welfare-client states of the federal government," said Mr. O'Donnell, who was an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat.

In a telephone interview, Mr. O'Donnell said the red states that went to Mr. Bush "collect more from the federal government than they send in. New York and California, Connecticut — the states that are blue are all the states that are paying for the bulk of everything this government does, from ... Social Security to everything else, and the people in those states don't like what this government is doing."

The Internet has exploded with talk of a blue-state confederacy, including one screed circulating by e-mail that features a map of a new country called "American Coastopia" and proposes lopping off the Northeast, the West Coast and the upper Midwest to form a new country, away from the "rednecks in Oklahoma" and the "homophobic knuckle-draggers in Wyoming."

"We were all going to move to various other countries, but then we thought — why should WE move?" the anonymous message asks. "We hold our noses as we fly over you. We are sickened by the way you treat people that are different from you. The rest of the world despises America, and we don't want to be lumped in with you anymore."

The secession movement has already spawned commercial opportunism. One Web site is selling T-shirts that read "I seceded."

No one at the White House would comment on the calls for secession, but one top Republican official with ties to the Bush administration said the recent talk is not surprising, coming off an election in which the president received more than 59 million votes — the most in history.

"If we were that far out of the mainstream, maybe we'd be pushing the creation of our own country," the official said. "Then we might have a chance of ever winning an election again."

But Andy Nowicki, a libertarian blogger, said the blue states will never secede because "liberals don't want to leave their enemies alone. Instead, as their track record shows, they want to take over the government in order to force their enemies to endure perpetual sensitivity training for being such racist, sexist, homophobic, 'closed-minded' boors, i.e., for disagreeing with them."

The emergence of a solidly Republican South prompted longtime Democratic activist Bob Beckel to advocate Southern independence the morning after Election Day.

"I think now that slavery is taken care of, I'm for letting the South form its own nation. Really, I think they ought to have their own confederacy," Mr. Beckel said on the "Fox and Friends" program.

While secession is often thought to be a Southern phenomenon, Northern leaders repeatedly threatened secession in the 19th century, in protest of such provocations as the War of 1812, as well as the admission of Louisiana and Texas to the Union. In 1803, Massachusetts Sen. Timothy Pickering proposed "a new confederacy," naming the New England states members along with New York ("the center of the confederacy").

In 1839, former President John Quincy Adams defended the right of secession in a speech in New York, saying, "Far better will it be ... to part in friendship with each other than to be held together by constraint."

But according to Slate.com — another liberal Web site that has explored the topic of secession — there are no provisions in U.S. law for a state or states to opt out of the Union, citing such authorities as Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School and Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School who say that since Appomattox "scholars have agreed that the Constitution grants no right of secession."

While legal scholars say states cannot leave the Union, nothing stops individuals. Before the 2000 election, actor Alec Baldwin was one of several Hollywood figures who threatened to leave the country if Mr. Bush was elected — but didn't.

"Unfortunately, there were no such pronouncements this time around," said Martin Grove, a columnist for HollywoodReporter.com, "perhaps because the last time around, when push came to shove, all of these people decided maybe they were in the best place they could possibly be to begin with."

I thought the republicans were the party of the rich. My how the tables have turned. :laugh: :laugh:

Also I found this map on Rush's site. Pretty damn funny imo.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_110904/content/blank.guest.html

I love how a great deal of leftists are suddenly singing the virtures of localism and federalist principals. Maybe they will stop calling the defenders of states rights racists and reactionary( one can hope anyway)

Maybe the Bush victory was a victory for liberty after all

I can't believe a newspaper, even the Times, actually published this nonsense.

Originally posted by Henry

I can't believe a newspaper, even the Times, actually published this nonsense.

I was pretty shocked myself, but I figured it's good entertainment value for the forum.

I hope they do. Then we can pour our military down on them, put up martial law till the black bloc and other anarchists and world socialist revolutionaries are jailed for insurrection. It might be the best way to purge the fanatical left out of the democrats and finally get decent candidates out of them.

Unless the supreme court decides otherwise, its illegal to leave the union.

"The Court held that individual states could not unilaterally secede from the Union and that the acts of the insurgent Texas legislature--even if ratified by a majority of Texans--were "absolutely null." Even during the period of rebellion, however, the Court found that Texas continued to be a state."

http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/380/

Originally posted by dreamingwolf

I hope they do. Then we can pour our military down on them, put up martial law till the black bloc and other anarchists and world socialist revolutionaries are jailed for insurrection. It might be the best way to purge the fanatical left out of the democrats and finally get decent candidates out of them.

Unless the supreme court decides otherwise, its illegal to leave the union.

"The Court held that individual states could not unilaterally secede from the Union and that the acts of the insurgent Texas legislature--even if ratified by a majority of Texans--were "absolutely null." Even during the period of rebellion, however, the Court found that Texas continued to be a state."

http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/380/

Dude. Listen to yourself. You hope that the North suceedes from the South and we go into another Civil War?

Don't you realize that NY, one of the biggest blue states has a Republican governer and NYC has a 'Republican' Mayor?

California also has a Republican governor. Oh well, so much for the two biggest blue states.

Originally posted by Henry

California also has a Republican governor. Oh well, so much for the two biggest blue states.

Arnold could take out all the left wing extemists by himself, didn't anyone see commando. :laugh:

Let the lefties leave

They can call the blue states the People's Republic of North America and start that Marxist-Leninist utopian workers paradise they all dream about so much

:laugh:

Hey, the extremists must be dealt with and the time is right, most secessionits states have the administrations that would favor the right. So this "civil war" would be more of a purge and collection of the violent revolutionaries that we see burning tires on highways to slow commuter traffic, mass dial false 911 emergancies to absorb police resources durring protests, and eliminate fanatical organizations like peta and its ilk.

also you need to be alittle less emotional, I was being facetious in a dead pan way. I know that "cival war" today is as much of a reality as kerry getting elected president.

Originally posted by dreamingwolf

Hey, the extremists must be dealt with and the time is right, most secessionits states have the administrations that would favor the right. So this "civil war" would be more of a purge and collection of the violent revolutionaries that we see burning tires on highways to slow commuter traffic, mass dial false 911 emergancies to absorb police resources durring protests, and eliminate fanatical organizations like peta and its ilk.

also you need to be alittle less emotional, I was being facetious in a dead pan way. I know that "cival war" today is as much of a reality as kerry getting elected president.

First. Please try to use proper grammar and spelling in your posts. It's just a courtesy to your readers.

Second. I don't know how any type of 'dead-pan' humor came through your post. If it was there, please point it out to me.

Third. I wasn't emotional. I was just asking you to consider what you were saying and how ridiculous the consequences would be of the action that you suggested.

Fourth. Are you suggesting the chances of Civil War are close to 48%? Or is that another 'dead-pan' joke?

If I had charged you money to read my post I would gladly rebate you 10% of the cost to ease your tears of my poor grammar and bad spelling. Come on guy this isnt an english final, show some effort and work through it.

Cant help you with humor, thats something you have to develope on your own. Remember not every thing is funny to everyone, infact somethings arent funny to some for the very same reason its funny to others.

Again, you were over emotional. I was mocking the very concept of secession, something that appears to be very close to your heart, and you thought me a monster for that.

If you think 48% of people here want to to leave the union you are making a crack dealer rich.

If we succeeded, you think we'd elect anarchist hippies?

Um, no.

We'd elect republican moderates, because, well, that's what we just did.

well theres a thinking man, but I think you could leave republican out of it. It just seems the dems are hating the middle lately.

Originally posted by dreamingwolf

If I had charged you money to read my post I would gladly rebate you 10% of the cost to ease your tears of my poor grammar and bad spelling. Come on guy this isnt an english final, show some effort and work through it.

This is a tangent, but it's really common courtesy to be considerate. Of course we all overlook typos and the like, but do we really have to dumb down the English language just because we don't have editors looking over our shoulders?

more b*tching and whining from the libs...

just shows what they really think about the democratic process...

on the flip side, what was so hideously wrong with my post on the english side of it all. come on thats a petty assualt, are you saying that if someone cant type and write perfectly their opinion means nothing? imagine how that would go over with voting.

Originally posted by Ancalagon the Black

This is a tangent, but it's really common courtesy to be considerate. Of course we all overlook typos and the like, but do we really have to dumb down the English language just because we don't have editors looking over our shoulders?

Do we have to make snide comments over people's grammar and spelling skills because you don't like what they think?

its easier than challenging the ideas

::shrug::

Originally posted by Johnny Punani

Do we have to make snide comments over people's grammar and spelling skills because you don't like what they think?

I didn't think I was making snide comments. I didn't even bring up anyone's spelling or grammar until dreamingwolf implied that there isn't any reason to be courteous about our writing. I wouldn't ever challenge an idea on the basis of how it was spelled. I certainly was not attacking dreamingwolf's ideas in this thread; it was a tangent.

Originally posted by dreamingwolf

on the flip side, what was so hideously wrong with my post on the english side of it all. come on thats a petty assualt, are you saying that if someone cant type and write perfectly their opinion means nothing? imagine how that would go over with voting.

I agree that yours isn't among the more impenetrable writing styles on this board.

:dallasuck

Originally posted by Ancalagon the Black

I didn't think I was making snide comments. I didn't even bring up anyone's spelling or grammar until dreamingwolf implied that there isn't any reason to be courteous about our writing. I wouldn't ever challenge an idea on the basis of how it was spelled. I certainly was not attacking dreamingwolf's ideas in this thread; it was a tangent.

I wasn't talking about you AtB...

Originally posted by Johnny Punani

I wasn't talking about you AtB...

You were talking about me, then?