{"id":45418,"date":"2018-10-23T03:00:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T07:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45418"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:42:25","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:42:25","slug":"california-secessionist-dreaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/10\/23\/california-secessionist-dreaming\/","title":{"rendered":"California (secessionist) dreaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise<\/em>, L. Neil Smith<\/a> suggests that the kindest thing to do to California is to allow it to secede from the Union:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

… some Californians bleat that they want to secede from a United States that threatens to make them straighten up and fly right. Superficially, that might be a workable idea: on paper, California has one of the largest, most powerful economies in the world \u2014 bigger than that of many independent nations. It has a long, wonderful coastline and a couple of really good natural ports. Its agricultural sector is second to none. There is oil and gas within easy reach. It has no real military defenses, but I\u2019m sure they\u2019d be more than willing to leech off America\u2019s defenses, our Navy, our Air Force, and our nuclear umbrella, like the deadbeat pajama boys they resemble, living in their mothers\u2019 basements.<\/p>\n

But wait. On the reasonable assumption that the California secession movement is limited to people in the counties that voted for Hillary Clinton, and that people in the counties who voted for Donald Trump do not want to secede, I consulted a California county-by-county election map for 2016. Blue counties dominate all but a tiny spot on the northern coast, which is too bad; most of the interior \u2014 the most productive part of the state \u2014 is bright red.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s my brilliant idea. Instead of fighting another bloody, stupid, senseless War of Secession like the one we had in 1865, let\u2019s grandly and magnanimously permit the state of California to secede \u2014 even insist on it \u2014 one county at a time. Those counties that vote to secede may do so and create the People\u2019s Republic of Californistan, or whatever.<\/p>\n

In exchange for defending this dog\u2019s breakfast of a polity, we will keep all of our military bases and installations, somewhat like Guantanamo Bay Naval Air Station in Cuba. I believe the legal term is “adverse possession”. Those counties that do not vote to secede \u2014 we wouldn\u2019t want them to become like the captive peoples and nations of Europe during the Cold War \u2014 may remain in the Union, joining the adjacent state (mostly Nevada) or forming their own. To paraphrase the Borg, \u201cWe will add their productiveness to our own.\u201d<\/p>\n

However the trouble (for California, anyway), if you look at the map, is that county-by-county secession leaves the people\u2019s Republic without visible means of support, a vagrant state, as it were, full of pencil-neck politicos and other worthless parasites, guilty of loitering on our Left Coast. They\u2019re already bankrupt, after decades of Leninist-Stalinist policies. Now they will never recover with their productive counties gone \u2014 and we get their avocados!<\/p>\n

Let them eat software.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith suggests that the kindest thing to do to California is to allow it to secede from the Union: … some Californians bleat that they want to secede from a United States that threatens to make them straighten up and fly right. Superficially, that might be a workable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,53,13],"tags":[35,1382,114],"class_list":["post-45418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics","category-usa","tag-california","tag-lneilsmith","tag-separatism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bOy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45420,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45418\/revisions\/45420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}