Every so often, various states talk about seceding and forming their own independent little countries. Usually, it’s Texas or Alaska or a handful of other states. However, it isn’t often theres talk of seceding to form a new state and remain within the union. (A little history from wiki)
Each state in our glorious little union is, essentially, it’s own country. Each one agrees to operate under an agreed upon framework and cede some authority to that collective government, but still retain a degree of autonomy. This is why something that is illegal in California can be perfectly legal in Montana. Once in a while some folks agitate to leave this happy little family and are forced at gunpoint to stay in the pot with the rest of us lobsters. (See the War Of Southern Overconfidence for an example of this). The practical upshot of this is that if you don’t like the rules/taxes/laws/politics of where you live, you have around 49 other places to try and see if you like better. (Of course, those federal laws and regs are a different matter.) [Tangentially, it seems to me that the Union should be like any other club..high standards to get in, and an open door policy if you want to leave
The notion of seceding from a state, though…that’s a path that hasn’t been trod nearly as much as the one of seceding from the union.
There is probably a huge degree of merit to the claims being made….California is a big state and it’s ludicrous to think that the guys living in the hills of northern California should have to bend knee to the polices coming outta Sacramento that are written for the mostly urban southern regions of the state. Kinda like how the folks up in Albany shouldnt subject the rest of the state to the laws meant for NYC.
As a ‘rugged individualist’-type, I like the idea of a bunch of like-minded folks staking out a piece of land and setting up their own system of rules. Of course, thats as long as those are rules that I like. But, as I said, there’s 49 other states I can try out if the .gov in this state gets too heavy handed for me. But…pulling up and heading for greener pastures is only an option after youve tried fixing the situation at home first.
Nothing will become of the state of Jefferson. It’ll be a nice little novelty show, but it would set a precedent for things like East and West Colorado, North and South New York, Upper Michigan and LowerMichigan, etc, etc. Ain’t gonna happen…not officially, anyway. There are plenty of ‘invisible borders’ and boundaries in various states..making them official is just not in the cards, methinks.
But…I salute the spirit of the Jeffersonians, in a very ‘Moon Is A Harsh Mistress’ kind of way.
You are right, the northern state of Jefferson will never happen. As long as southern and central valley California needs water, they will never allow a vote on it.
See further examples at “West Virginia?” 😉
“…but no new state shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed from the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as the Congress.” – Art. V, Sec. 3, U.S. Constitution
Not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening, evah.
Forming “Jefferson” within California alone is absolutely forbidden, and trying to form it from a piece of CA and a piece of OR would require a majority of both states’ legislatures, assent of their governors, and a majority of the Congress to approve, provided whoever was POTUS would sign off on it.
Sh’yeah, when monkeys fly outta my butt.
News articles discussing same are provided as mental masturbation for ‘tards, written by the kids who got Ds in civics in high school.
Best to leave them in the compost heap, where they belong.
Freedom. It’s what’s for dinner.
Well. War of Southern Overconfidence you say.
War of States Rights I call it.
Ignoring completely the issue that brought up the disagreement betwixt the southern states and the fed gov makes this little argument far easier to understand. Take the recent gay marriage debate as the same example. Some states wanted it, others did not. And it was good. Till someone got a burr under their saddle and wanted it the law of the land. In today’s world the Supreme Court said ALL states shall abide. Back then the same thing was proposed, and rejected (correct decision in my mind) based on States Rights. Same thing we just had, what is good for us here is distasteful for you there. Well you stay there and we stay here and all is good. Till Fed gov said, Thou shalt all play with the same rules. So the Southern States did what the Founding Fathers did, broke off in order to form a new union. Legal? No. Was it legal to break off from England? Nope. (Remember America was not even 100 yrs old, and is still quite young compared to Europe) While the North did have the manufacturing, it was the South that was making all the money with ag products, and with the gold deposits in Ga and N Carolina could support their own currency. The North could not let that happen but also didn’t have the cash to support a war. It took the damn holdouts at Ft Sumpter (the majority of Fed forts in the south quietly folded their tents and paddled off, under Confederate protection) to push the matter to a shooting war.
Consider Ft Sumpter as the Gulf of Tonkin and you get the idea. Nobody really wanted it but “by golly someone has to show them”.
Before the 14th Amendment it was “These United States”, not “The United States”. The move to gov controlling most everything really began after that war. I’m not saying the the right side won or lost, I’m saying it was STATES RIGHTS, something this nation was founded on and not some human rights issue, that was the cause of that war.
And based on current petitions to leave the union (never going to happen but a look at attitudes) after the last two elections, the fracture lines from that war never really healed, in fact I think we added some good natured folks.
So “Feel the Burn” Sanders won New Hampshire. Time to go get parts kits and magazines.
Keep up the good work CZ!
“States’ Rights” my ass. The Southern states had absolutely no problem with the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 that compelled residents of free states to assist Southern slaveowners recover escaped slaves, under threat of imprisonment and fine, that sent federal marshals into Northern homes in search of escaped slaves and dragged abolitionists into federal courts to stand trial.
Having failed in their attempt to impose slaveowners’ rules on the entire US, the petulant South then decided to use force against the Constitutionally-elected legitimate government.
To call it the “War of Southern Overconfidence” lets the slave-South off the hook far too lightly. They were traitors, plain and simple, who made war on the Constitution and the United States. Stop trying to whitewash their actions with fairy tales.
Actually, I call it the “War of Southern Overconfidence” mostly to goad people who insist on calling it the “War Of Northern Aggression”.
Here in the U P of Michigan back in the mid 70s a bunch of us tried that as you mentioned. A lawyer from Ironwood, Ted ???? [I don’t remember] was the front man. We thought we had a good case for setting up the State of Superior, but the opposition did a massive campaign and pointed out that we received 12 times [best recollection] as much money from Lansing as we contributed. Our position to refute that was that the money was spent to regulate us with state employees that we would be better off without. anyway we didn’t get anywhere. People will sell their freedom cheap.
Vermont? Kentucky? Tennessee? Maine? West Virginia? Do these names mean nothing to you? Not only can a state split occur, it has on multiple occasions in the past. Sure, Jefferson is a long shot, but throwing your head back and warbling “ain’t gonna happen” helps no one.
cmdr zero has a point. without a framework of govt to lend “legitimacy” any separatists will be branded terrorists and easily defeated before it even begins. if a whole state withdraws( which is allowed under the framework of the constitution) it can also seek foreign aid which is critical for success.
Well played. We also used to buy and sell human slaves, and interned American citizens for the egregious crime of slanty eyes and yellow skin. (The latter at the express behest of the AG and later governor of Greater Jefferson, and even later chief justice of the US Supreme Court.)
How did those experiments in escaping the bounds of reality, let alone propriety, work out for us, as a nation? How did “kicking the can down the road” in regard to those state creations work out in avoiding the fundamental question of slavery, or softening the blow of the ultimate disagreement on the question? Would you like to answer that in light of Antietam, Gettysburg, or Sherman’s March To The Sea? Or in reference to states’ rights, habeus corpus, the Bill of Rights – particularly the 10th Amendment- and the idea of a limited federal government over the republic and its citizenry?
Go back and look up the particular circumstances of each of those named states’ creations.
Tell me which, if any, of them actually apply now or could possibly, today or tomorrow, or any other forseeable time, particularly in light of the events of 1861-1865, and the passage of the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Amendments to the Constitution. And then, please, by all means, report back to us on your discoveries, and show your work.
There is no one state that is going to consent to giving any other one twice the Senatorial representation it now has, let alone any 26 states, nor senators from same. No governor or legislature, let alone a president, who’d ever agree to even consider the idea, let alone vote or sign such hogwash into reality.
Else Texas, just for one example, would happily ask to be split into 487 states, or 4,087 such, inaugurating the bumrush of the other 49 states to go even farther than that, stopping in all likelihood only when we arrive at having 300,000,000+ senators, and 300,000,000 members of the House of Representatives, and a commensurate number of “states”. Or else importing millions of more “senators” and “congressmen” here by the boatload, for the various factions, to stuff the ballot box.
Except right now, we call those “elections”, not “legislatures”.
So please, get real.
The idea of Jefferson is as much fun to mentally masturbate with as the idea of becoming an overnight powerball billionaire.
And about 1/1,000,000th as likely to actually occur.
Harmless as long as you keep it inside your own head, but fairly delusional when uttered in polite company as a serious thing.
Giving the idea 10 seconds more consideration than it deserves by any sober person, let us know how and why the People’s Republiks of Califrutopia and Northern Hashish are going to see it in their own interests to counterbalance their current leftist power monopoly over their territories by creating in between the two of them a rural, resource-rich, and vastly more conservative/libertarian counterweight to their current liberal playgrounds, where people could do whatever they like, log the forests, grow crops on their land with the water that falls there, and all without paying a nickel in tribute to either Sacramento or Salem? It is to laugh.
And then, explain how you and/or they would then convince 51 senators, and POTUS, that we really needed two more Republican senators and a number of congressmen beholden to that same right-of-center electorate, to diminish the power of each remaining senator to less than 1%, forever.
Conversely, see if you can figure out why such a hare-brained idea never even gets beyond the silly newspaper column inch filler idea level of existence, since forever, and would never see the light of day in either state’s legislatural byzantine subcommittees, even in 1000 alternate universes, and even positing one such with a country ruled by the clinically insane, and where daily crack and LSD usage were not merely legal, but universally compulsory.
And I’m probably being too lenient there.
Wishing it were otherwise may be a fine thing, but it will never trump obvious political reality. The societal upheaval necessary to make it any sort of rational possibility will make the discussion moot by the sheer magnitude of the calamity necessary to even make it possible: when the entire civilization melts down enough to bring about Jefferson, the idea of the United States will be farcically quaint and nostalgic in the first place.
You’ll be much more concerned with your next meal, and getting through the coming winters. Anyone setting up any sort of government at that point is liable to die taller, with a much longer neck, in short order, and for some decades to centuries thereafter.
cf. The Middle Ages
Just saying.
And now there is East California (the state formerly known as Colorado).
Don’t forget DC, which the Dems want as a new state so they can get two more Dem Senators.