[Washington Post] The push by 50 western Virginia counties to secede in 1863, forming West Virginia at the height of the Civil War, was led by a charismatic store-clerk-turned-lawyer who famously urged his supporters: "Cut the knot now! Cut it now! Apply the knife."
West Virginia was the last state to break off from another. Now, 150 years later, a 49-year-old information technology consultant wants to apply the knife to Maryland's five western counties. "The people are the sovereign," says Scott Strzelczyk, leader of the fledgling Western Maryland Initiative, and the western sovereigns are fed up with Annapolis's liberal majority, elected by the state's other sovereigns.
"If you think you have a long list of grievances and it's been going on for decades, and you can't get it resolved, ultimately this is what you have to do," says Strzelczyk, who lives in New Windsor, a historic town of 1,400 people in Carroll County. "Otherwise you are trapped."
Strzelczyk's effort is one of several across the country to separate significant portions of states from, as he puts it, "the dominant ruling class." Nearly a dozen northern Colorado counties are the furthest along, with nonbinding referendums set for November ballots. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is making a move to join with parts of Wisconsin. Northern California counties want to form a state called Jefferson.
Historians, political scientists and the leaders of the movements say secession efforts are being fueled by irreconcilable differences on issues such as gun control, taxes, energy policy, gay marriage and immigration -- all subjects of recent legislative efforts at state and federal levels. The notion of compromise is a non-starter. With secessionists, the term "final straw" comes up a lot.
"You don't have to be a student of the details to know that people are just disgusted with what goes on these days," says Kit Wellman, a political philosopher who studies secession at Washington University in St. Louis. "These people figure they are better off on their own if they could just be with like-minded folks."
Secession is a difficult political fight to win. The U.S. Constitution allows regions to separate only with the approval of the state legislature and Congress, and over the years there have been hundreds of quixotic and unsuccessful efforts, according to Michael J. Trinklein, the author of "Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States that Never Made It."
In the 1950s, Northern California tried to form the state of Shasta, to protect its fresh water. The builders of Mount Rushmore also wanted it to sit in a new state: Absaroka, a reference to a subrange of the Rocky Mountains. Eastern Shore residents pushed for the state of Chesapeake in the 1970s to retain tourist tax dollars.
What's different now is how the secession efforts illuminate a hard truth about the country: The rural-urban divide is increasingly a point of political conflict. The population boom in urban areas such as Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs near the District, the Boulder-Denver areas in Colorado, and in Detroit have filled state legislatures with liberal policymakers pushing progressive agendas out of sync with rural residents, who feel increasingly isolated and marginalized.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/09/2013 10:42 ||
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#1
The basics in most of this is urban vs everyone else. It doesn't matter if your metropolis is actually a positive creator of wealth via resources. If you have enough votes you can pillage the countryside and impose your 'culture' on the sharecroppers masses while living off of the product of their labors (food, energy, etc).
the WaPo is one of the big drivers of the leftist culture in the MD and VA suburbs of DC
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/09/2013 11:43 Comments ||
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PK2 - Exactly. Voter ID is so noxious to the left because if most of your urban voting center consists of not-eligible-to-vote types who moved to the city for the welfare bennies, well, that's just no fun, is it?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/09/2013 12:22 Comments ||
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#4
The libs will start doing what other Socialist states do. Take over the farms.
#5
Parts of Colorado are actually voting on a seccession measure this November. And if it makes sense to form a new state, then why not create a new country? Texas -- I'm looking at you.
[BUZZFEED] One of President B.O.'s most prominent critics on the black left said Sunday that a strike on Syria in the face of Congressional disapproval would be "dictatorial" -- and grounds for impeachment. Dictators aren't constrained by any silly legislatures.
"It doesn't make sense to commit more war crimes," Cornel West said Sunday on the syndicated radio show Smiley and West, to an approving response from host Tavis Smiley, who has also been consistently critical of Obama. Gassing civilians, for that matter gassing anyone, is in fact considered a war crime.
The two men, leading black public intellectuals, have emerged as controversial figures in a community whose support for the first black president is overwhelming. West, in response, has recently attacked other black leaders for what he views as their reflexive support for Obama.
"It would be an illegal war. It would be an immoral war for the United States to begin bombing and sending missiles to Syria and killing more innocent people," said West, who is a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. You have to chug a beer. It's a standing rule at the 'Burg, every time somebody burps out "immoral, illegal war." That was true five years ago. We still gotta do that?
Later in the discussion of Syria, Smiley said: "If the President doesn't get the vote that he wants... then I hope he has more sense then to go ahead anyway. But you used the phrase 'dictatorial' -- and that's exactly what it would be."
"You would think in some ways grounds for impeachment," replied West.
That's nice. How will you get Senator Reid (D-bully) to execute your bright idea, Professor?
Posted by: Fred ||
09/09/2013 10:28 ||
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#1
I wonder what would happen if Obama ordered a strike and the military refused to carry it out on the grounds it's an unlawful order.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/09/2013 12:29 Comments ||
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I'll order more popcorn, Deacon. :-D
Posted by: Barbara ||
09/09/2013 13:39 Comments ||
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I'm agreeing with Cornell West on things.
It kinda hurts.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/09/2013 14:22 Comments ||
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I believe West is doing two clever things here (1) making it appear as if the left and blacks are not in lockstep with Obama (2) laying the bait for Republicans to start impeachment which will easily be manipulated by the media into racist attacks which will build Obamas poll numbers again.
#6
At last check, the Bammer is repor prepping a covert deal which requires Baby Assad to leave power [unlikely].
Will he the Bammer still attack Assad iff Congress fails to authorize a milstrike, i.e. NO CONGRESSIONAL MANDATE; andor will he still strike Assad even iff the UNO determines that Assad didn't commit the chemical attack, i.e. ATTACK EVEN IFF ASSAD IS N-O-T THE PERPETRATOR - FYI ANY US CONGRESSIONAL OR UNO MANDATE TO ATTACK ASSAD IN SYRIA IS BY DEFINITION NOT A MANDATE TO ATTACK IRAN???
AFAIK he's still NOT armed the Rebels, nor has placed key conditions on US aid to them, + NO ONE IN wASHINGTON OR THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY WANTS RADICAL ISLAMIST-JIHADI/MILTERR GROUPS TO GET THEIR HANDS ON ASSAD'S WMDS + MILTECHS.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
