LET THE BLUE STATES GO!
November 23, 2004

by Joe Sobran

     As everyone knows, the United States of America are 
no longer quite so united as they used to be. They are 
now divided into blue states and red states. The blue 
states tend to be liberal and Democratic and the red 
states tend to be conservative and Republican.

     The blue states, concentrated on the coasts, are 
upset that President Bush has been reelected -- or, as 
many blue-staters would say, elected. I can't blame them; 
but then, the alternative scared me even more than Bush 
did.

     Some blue-staters are even talking about seceding 
from the Union. To me this is the most heartening 
development in many years. I don't quite understand it, 
since the blue-staters usually favor a huge centralized 
government; and Bush is certainly giving us that. One new 
book by two British observers argues that Bush has 
invented a new style of conservatism, which, instead of 
opposing big government, makes the most of it. Maybe his 
"big-government conservatism" is finally teaching 
liberals the virtues of small government.

     Anyhow, I'm delighted to see them learning. I never 
expected them to rediscover Jefferson Davis, but perhaps 
the age of miracles isn't past after all. Soon we may be 
hearing the rebel yell in staid Boston.

     It's generally a healthy thing when people rethink 
their basic political assumptions, and it usually takes a 
shock to make them do so. A rethinking of mass democracy 
is long overdue. Faith in sheer majority rule was 
assuredly alien to the Founders of the Republic, which is 
why they called it a republic; for them, democracy meant 
mob rule, and it's one of the amusing turns of American 
history that the allegedly conservative Republicans have 
become the most ardent champions of the weird notion that 
wisdom resides in numerical majorities.

     The blue-staters have had the kind of trauma that 
leads to conversion. The scales of centralism are falling 
from their eyes. Sure, they want big government -- but 
not faith-based, anti-abortion, homophobic, war-mongering 
big government! They were thinking of something more, 
well, Scandinavian.

     Or Canadian. Some of the neo-secessionist are toying 
with forming a new union with our friendly neighbor to 
the north. This would permit a contiguous federation, a 
rather crab-shaped polity extending down both coasts. 
Canada, unlike the United States, recognizes the right of 
its provinces to secede, so if things didn't work out, 
the blue states could opt out again. It is a bit queer to 
think of San Diego and Baltimore as Canadian cities, but 
I suppose we could get used to it.

     Personally, I'd miss Boston and San Francisco, two 
of my favorite cities. On the other hand, I respect their 
right to go their own way, and I'd oppose taking up arms 
to stop them.

     Which of course raises the obvious question: Would 
the U.S. Government ever permit it? The last time the 
issue of withdrawing from the Union came up, the Federal 
Government's response was "Not nohow, not no way," and it 
took rather extreme measures to prevent it. And today its 
arsenal is immeasurably greater than it was then, 
including what we now call weapons of mass destruction.

     So the problem would have to be handled with great 
delicacy. The blue states would have to achieve their 
freedom by nonmilitary means. That would mean persuading 
the red states to accept secession as a legitimate, 
righteous, and constitutional cause.

     Is that possible? Yes, it's possible. By another 
fine historical twist, the reddest of the red states 
today are the Southern states that seceded the last time. 
The South, which has a long memory, might well be 
strongly sympathetic to the plea of the blue states for a 
peaceful separation, especially considering its 
differences with, and even antipathy to, the culturally 
alien Yankee states of the Northeast in particular.

     We forget that sympathy for secession was so strong 
in the North that Abraham Lincoln had to crush freedom of 
speech and press, with thousands of arrests, in order to 
suppress it. If the North had been free, the South would 
have won its freedom.

     "One nation, indivisible"? This has been our mantra 
for over a century. Today's mantra, "diversity," is in 
important respects closer to the original spirit of the 
Republic -- before it was welded into an unwieldy and 
centralized monolith.

     "Mightier than armies is an idea whose time has 
come." We are dealing with an idea whose time has come 
back.

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