Love It Or Leave It

One of the interesting things about America that most people don't pay too much attention to is that we're not really one country.

Well, we are and we aren't -- we've got one president in charge, but we've also got a congress in charge, whose job it is to represent individual states. Most laws American citizens have to deal with on a day to day basis are issued by the states and enforced by state or local authorities. We were founded as a federation, a union of colonies (and it's no accident that our national pastimes are the team sports of football and baseball). When some of the team members exercised their option to leave when they didn't like the way things were heading, we fought a Civil War. (Call it a contract dispute.) But that's all history -- we're one big team now.

Or are we?

One of my recent web trawls turned up a surprising number of players who are ready to renegotiate their contracts and become free agents. In other words, growing groups of citizens are ready to secede from the Union. The Constitution, they say, isn't working for them. Things in Washington have gotten too bad to be saved. (And with the Senate crowning Korean cultist Sun Myung Moon the new messiah, and the growing influence of other cult-like groups that brag congressmen as members, who can blame them?)

The most visible of these new secessionist groups is probably the Christian Exodus organization. This is a group of dedicated, fundamentalist Christians who are petitioning likeminded citizens to move to South Carolina in order to raise enough votes to secede and form a sovereign, Christian nation. They've got it all planned out -- focusing the emigration to hit one legislative district at a time, each district voting in a Christian Exodus-friendly representative. They hope to have their first secessionist representative by December 31, 2006.

Take that, Moonie congress!

Before our Republican readers break into cold sweats about their power base marching to Charleston, let's look towards the opposite end of the political spectrum, with the Second Vermont Republic. They're ready to leave the U.S. and establish a well-reasoned republic based on the ideals of direct democracy, environmental sustainability, nonviolence and a health-care model based on the Swiss system. They also point out that, unlike most states, they've been their own country before.

I'm particularly fond of their foreign policy:

We also favor negotiations with Maine, New Hampshire and the four Atlantic provinces of Canada possibly to create a New Atlantic Confederacy - a nation about the size of Denmark. We would not rule out similar negotiations with Quebec....

Most folks probably know about Quebec's frequent stabs at independence (a struggle which continues now as ever). But Maine? New Hampshire?

Well, yeah. Some folks in Maine (a state formed when it seceded from Massachusetts) and New Hampshire (state motto: Live Free or Die!) are ready to leave the U.S. as part of the New England Confederation. (Unfortunately, their "real" homepage is down, but that link leads to the valiant rebels of Rhode Island, who point out that their state was the last to sign the Constitution in 1790 and has regretted it ever since.) Secessionists from all over New England have signed onto the Portland Resolution, eager to find their own way free of interference from the District of Columbia.

New Hampshire is also the site of the Free State Project, which is sort of like a Libertarian equivalent to Christian Exodus. So even if the rest of New England doesn't follow through, we might be looking at a New Hampshire Free State one of these days. They've already elected plenty of Libertarians to state office....

Turning south, as a Florida native, I feel like I have to give some cred to The Conch Republic, who are freedom lovers of a decidedly non-Libertarian variety. Short history: In the mid-1980s, the U.S. government blockades U.S. 1, the only road leading to Key West. The island city officially secedes from the Union, then immediately surrenders to the U.S. military and demands foreign aid as a conquered nation. And sells lots of kitschy Conch Republic merchandise.

Coming at it from another, slightly more serious direction, the islanders over in Hawaii feel like they've been colonized by an oppressive democratic nation, and want to restore their freedom loving monarchy. Let's leave that reversal for the political scientists to puzzle out.

So far, even if all these movements succeeded, they're kind of small potatoes -- little states, not a lot of land, nothing in the way of economic powerhouses or population centers. For that, we'll have to look west.

The biggest, loudest example out there has to be The Republic of Texas, which not only has a proud precedent as the independent Lone Star Republic, but also knows its way around the media, both new-fangled and old fashioned. That big, big Texas pride, though, has to take a back seat to the two largest contenders for independent nationhood.

The Bear Flag Republic (better known as California) is America's most populous state, and has an economy larger than most countries. Like Texas and Vermont, it has a history of independent nationhood... but unlike them, it has some strong financial incentives to break away.

Alaskan secessionists, on the other hand, boast a state that's huge, oil-rich, and has a tradition of electing independence-minded politicians. It's not even connected to the rest of the country.

That's something to wonder about.

And, you know, I'm not the only one who's wondering what's going on in these secessionist fringes... and how it might start affecting things in the politics of the mainstream.

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This is just a glancing blow at secessionist America. If you want to know more about it, check out this big pile of links. I think they've got every state covered and then some.

Posted by grant at July 27, 2004 12:40 PM