— by Odysseus
The discussion regarding secession from the Union has come up far sooner than expected, following the presidential election results. Although it is given the “snicker” treatment by the press, there is actually far more to this thought than the casual observer could tell from the dismissive treatment it is getting from the media.
When studying the last quarter century of presidential and national elections, the pattern of voting has been shockingly consistent. There are already now two “Americas” even if this is not acknowledged by a national boundary line. This fact becomes self evident when one looks at the voting maps as broken down by state, county, and population. The Democrats (Left) have a geographic consistency to their vote as do the Republicans (Right). This voting pattern reflects not just party affiliation, but an entire world view. America has already separated into two nations, and it would be logical if political boundaries also shifted to reflect the change.
Historical political boundaries have never been “permanent”. In merely the last 30 years, the Soviet Union broke up into several nation states. Yugoslavia split into autonomous parts. The new nation of “Germany” came into existence, being comprised of the former German Federal Republic (West Germany) and the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
The United Nations and modern political thought strongly support the rights of peoples to “self determination”. They acknowledge that like-minded groups of people and nations have the right to self rule and self governance and that they should not be “ruled” by powers that do not share their values, cultural heritage or beliefs, and impose their own rule through a tyranny of a majority and the force of arms.
When presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared to be merely facetious when he spoke about a portion of America “clinging to their guns and religion”, he spoke about a genuine divide in the nation. The last twenty years of elections show that the major parts of the eastern seaboard and California want to move in a new direction from much of the traditions and heritage of America. They have little use for “religion”, seeing it as a mere superstition, and are not “church going”. Likewise, they see no continuing value in traditional family models of marriage between a man and a woman, who seek to have and raise their own biological children. It seems as though the majority of the population in these geographic zones desire a much greater role for the government in the daily lives of the citizens, more along the lines of European socialist democracy than the laissez faire government of traditional America. They feel comfortable allowing central government power to closely regulate labor, land use, individual consumption of goods and resources, and even familial disputes. However, these same elections reveal that, at a minimum, 47% of Americans do not wish to make these changes to how the country functions.
It is the very regularity of this divide that points us towards the conclusion that secession may be the only fair and just solution. When the bare majority has shifted in the past to the “right”, the population in the “left” states was forced to live under a “right” government that has fundamentally different values than the vast majority of the citizens in these states. At present, a bare majority is forcing the “right” states to live under a “left” government that not only does not share their values, but actively seeks to ridicule, belittle, undermine and legally encumber their deeply-held beliefs.
No one can honestly argue that “left” America has not become truly hostile against its citizens who adhere to traditional values. All religions are respected except the traditional ones, which are regularly mocked and ridiculed by popular culture. Likewise, traditional family structures are lampooned, and the traditional family father is universally and slanderously portrayed as a buffoon or idiot while the woman who desires to be a full-time housewife is treated with outright hostility. People with a “southern” accent are portrayed as intellectually inferior in the pop-culture propaganda that flows out of New York and California, and, when not being portrayed as stupid, they are always made to be the “villain” of any fictional story.
This kind of persistent and pervasive calumny is eerily reminiscent of historical regimes that were promulgating blood libel in order to dehumanize those segments of their population that they intend to oppress or even exterminate. If the popular media, press, and politicians had subjected any other racial, ethnic or cultural group to such uniformly pejorative treatment, the entire planet would be outraged. This scurrilous treatment of a long-repressed minority is a national shame. The people of these traditional regions of the country have been economically depressed and have suffered from a lower standard of living, inferior health care, higher infant mortality rates, and shorter lifespans than than the people of the Northeast and West Coast for over 100 years. That the current purveyors of “culture” now choose to add insult to injury and compound it with political repression is only shocking in that remains uncommented upon.
In a territory of the size and diversity of the present “United States of America”, it is unnecessary and offensive that such vast numbers of people should have to be subjugated to a system that is both offensive and oppressive. These hundreds of millions of people should be allowed self-determination so that they can live their lives in the manner that their culture and tradition dictate. They should be allowed their “God” and “guns” and high-fat, high-sodium diets. Likewise, there is no reason why the northeastern seaboard and West Coast should be inhibited from developing their progressive agenda, free from the recalcitrance of the traditionalists whose values they despise. The present borders of the United States of America encompass a region with more than sufficient territory to accommodate multiple nations so that millions of people do not have to be forced to live oppressed by governance and culture that are inimical to their own deeply-held beliefs.
Fortunately, the great American divide between those who wish to live according to the more traditional lifestyle with less reliance on government, but with consequently greater risk and reliance on family versus those who wish to follow the route of the “progressives” are already geographically divergent. Just as the “Muslims” and “Christians” needed to be separated in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, a starting point for negotiating the geographic boundaries of autonomous regions of the “United States” is readily visible in the last thirty years of voting maps.
The 2000 County Map:
The 2004 County Map:
The 2008 County Map:
The 2012 County Map:
While the maps of the split in how Electoral College votes went by state are illustrative, they probably would not be sufficient to do justice to the actual breakup. Hasty, rough drawing of new political boundaries along merely state lines would leave the outcome with politically unstable states, internally divided and still quite vulnerable to further strife. If the new borders were drawn using lines based on the county distribution of political/cultural viewpoints, it could yield more fair and just results and therefore a more stable, sustainable, resolution.
The three-dimensional maps show that this divide of fundamental values reflects fundamental differences in these societies. Many states that fall into the “left” column are actually predominated by counties that do share those beliefs. Vast swaths of territory, communities, and individuals are being forced to live according to precepts that they fundamentally disagree with and, in many cases, find offensive. As can be seen from these maps, a single, heavily-populated urban complex frequently outnumbers in mere population the entire rest of the state. Consequently, the urban mass in the state writes laws that are suitable for its situation and lifestyle that are completely unworkable for the population of the rest of the state. This tyranny of the bare majority is now “writ large” across America.
The progressive, urban cosmopolitan regions of the United States should be allowed to develop unconstrained by the more traditional values of the more rural regions. Likewise, the regions dominated by rural values should be allowed to go their own way and not be forced to accept the imposition of oppressive, alien laws and values upon millions of Americans. Secession is not silly and should not be treated as such. It is a viable and just solution for resolving the increasingly unbridgeable divide between the two “Americas”. The “Federal American Republic”, “Pacific Ocean States”, and “North Eastern Republican Democracy” would get along much better as friendly neighbors than continue to be forced to live together as a feuding family.
