Secession: It's the American Way

So... the people of New England and the Northeast -- who (excepting New Hampshire, where I admit I sit) overwhelmingly supported Al Gore, who actually won the election but isn’t President. They’re against the War, too. They’re against the tax cut. And after being the only region of the Country actually attacked in the War on Terror, they find the department earmarked to specifically defend them massively underfunded. In the meantime, civil rights and privacy rights are being drained away willy nilly, regardless of our wishes in the matter.

It seems to me that a couple of hundred years back, we of New England and the Northeast felt that perhaps our overlords didn’t respect our rights, took away our voice and imposed their will on us. And oddly enough, we came up with a solution to that perception. It involved informing said overlords that their services would no longer be required.

It’s time we secede again. It’s time we wish the increasingly Evangelical, increasingly right wing, increasingly xenophobic, increasingly corporate, increasingly classist, increasingly autocratic central government that as much as we’ve appreciated being the founders of their nation, they’ve stopped getting it right and we’ve decided to make a go of it on our own instead. We don’t claim we’ll be a Superpower. We don’t claim we’ll be the greatest nation on the Earth.

But we’ll be free. And we won’t be ashamed.

Maine, New Hampshire (if we must), Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware. We could be American New England, collectively, or the United American States. Or maybe we could name ourselves after John Adams, who never wavered in his support of freedom.

I’m serious. We could secede. We could let the rest of those poor bastards have George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Toby Keith, Colin Powell, Rush Limbaugh, Texas, Arkansas, Orange Alerts, The Patriot Act, Patriot Act II, the suspension of Habeas Corpus and Crank Yankers all to themselves. The South, which has mentioned Rising Again, could take the opportunity to do the same and do whatever the Hell they like. If they agree to let us be our own country, we can agree to recognize them as their own. We could do the same with California and the Pacific Northwest, should they decide there’s no way they’d want to be associated with a United States without us. Texas, while fitting in perfectly with this new, smaller, Christian dominated United States, might choose to become a Republic sheerly because they really want to, and that’s fine. We’d recognize them too.

We’d even give anyone who thinks George W. Bush is doing the best possible job in all ways a chance to move away and live in the United States, penalty free if they promise not to come back. And as a sign of good faith, we’d let the elder George Bush keep his summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine. If, of course, he agrees to customs searches on his way through.

Odd things would happen if we seceded. For one thing... terrorists would stop wanting to blow things up in New York City as a symbol, since the Big Apple would be coming with us. We would be able to enact legislation without catering to the Religious Right. Hell, we could set up a Parliamentary System and have the ability to throw our government out whenever they started pissing us off, preventing our reaching the point we’ve gotten to. We’d trade cheerfully with the U.S., with Canada (who might like us a lot better than they currently like the U.S.), we’d keep good relations with Europe, actually have good relations with France, and have a nation that from its first moment was anti-slavery in all incarnations. If Tony Blair, desperate to please whoever the President of the United States, currently is, declares himself an enemy to our new English state, we can even enjoy a Revolutionary War revival of anti-British slogans. More than likely, though, the U.K. would happily embrace us, form various strategic alliances, and sell their excellent beer in our nation. Free speech, dissent and protest would be embraced. Fox News would be foreign press. We would fund a public radio and television at BBC levels and it would develop a standard of news and insight that would be the envy of all developed nations, except the U.S. which would make fun of it. We would keep David Letterman but give up Jay Leno. We would keep Jon Stewart but say goodbye to Craig Kilborn and Jimmy Kimmel. In the interest of good relations with our former compatriots in the U.S. we would retain Regis Philbin.

Most of all... I wouldn’t be ashamed of what my leaders have done in my name, and I wouldn’t feel so powerless to do anything about it.

So let’s do it. Let’s form committees. Let’s have debates. Let’s write a new Constitution. There’s no reason we can’t. If enough states choose to come along, there wouldn’t even have to be unpleasantness with the U.S.

Let’s secede. John Adams would want us to.

The Balkanized Americas

Here, on a map that gives short shrift to Canada and Mexico, but actually had the U.S.A. state dividers, is the first look at Post-Secession Former U.S. Of course, I’m not sheerly imposing my own will down upon the peoples of the continent. This is just a beginning.

( See the Map here! )

Someone's already covered one of our secession movements...

My friend Andy pointed out a link to one area already ready to secede (indeed, claiming to have already done so). The Republic of Cascadia maps much of the Pacific Coalition from my secession map. They take the Cascades as their border, so they also take a big chunk of British Columbia with them. I had left Canada out of these discussions, but if one assumes that Cascadia takes a chunk of BC and Quebec takes the opportunity to seperate from British Canada, it’s easy to see the Maritimes and maybe even Ontario coming along with the United American Commonwealth....

Holy God this is funny.

Okay. This is the kind of funny that’s tragic... yet hysterical.

Brace yourself. Don’t drink anything. And then go see prodigal and read the epic tale of... Dogs in Elk.