Guest Post: Cal-Exit=> The Abbeville (Institute) Blog=> Brion McClanahan

Today's post is from a topic that's about 1 month old; The proposed Cal-Exit.  With the "unfortunate" dual conservative victories of the BrExit (Great Britain deciding to leave the European Union - or what was once simply billed as "the European common market," where no tariffs whole be charged to member states, but morphed out of control into a "union of countries designed to compete with the United States) and the Election of Donald J. Trump as the President of the United States (single-handedly "undoing" what Barack Obama and his acolytes had done to America during the 8 years they ran the country - into the proverbial ditch), the liberal left, primarily in coastal California have decided enough is enough:  They can't all go to Canada, so they'll just take their state, damnit, and leave the US.  Here is Brion McClanahan's "Southern viewpoint" of that concept.

CalExit

By Brion McClanahan

July 27, 2017

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has given the green light for CalExit proponents to begin collecting signatures for a California secession ballot initiative in the 2018 general election.

This is good news. California is the logical place to begin having a conversation about secession, and every red state American should be actively supporting the proposal.

As California goes, so goes Oregon and Washington, and in the not so distant future perhaps Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Maybe Hawaii might finally get the chance to regain its independence.

One can dream.

What would this mean for red state America?

Imagine a world without Senators Pocahontas, Crazy Bernie, Diane Feinstein, or Kamala Harris?

Add to that list Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, and even Susan Collins and the Congress becomes a much more hospitable place.

Imagine all the red state people living in peace with no Deep North or West Coast hell.

It’s easy if you try.

Would the Congress be perfect? No. There would still be a host of neocons taking up space. They can be more problematic than the Democrats in regard to foreign policy, but certainly issues such as immigration, the welfare state, taxes, fiscal restraint, healthcare, abortion and a host of other hot button topics would take a decided turn in the direction of real federalism.

The Senate would be split 51-31 and the House 220-126. Those are not super majorities but close.

The left would be reduced to an insignificant other in red state politics. In fact, you could envision a mass exodus of American pinkos pulling up stakes and moving to the grand west coast socialist utopia or its cousin in the Deep North.

Red state America would look a lot more like real America. Chuck Thompson quipped the North would be better off without the red states. I think it’s the other way around. Heck, many Southerners might even like the United States flag again. It would be free from the stain of Yankee invasion.

The irony, of course, is that only the North could pull this off in modern America. Their “treasury of counterfeit virtue” allows them the ability to say good riddance to the hayseeds in fly over country. Always being on the “right side of history” gets you bonus points in the world of emotivist politics.

And it was the North not the South that agitated for secession first. Oliver Ellsworth and Rufus King told John Taylor of Caroline they wanted out in 1794. Taylor was shocked, but perhaps he should have asked how Virginia could help. It would have solved nearly eighty years of unnecessary conflict and kept New England from bloviating about secession in 1801, 1804, 1815, and 1848. They just never had the stones to pull it off. As usual, the South acted while New England debated.

The key word, though, is “unnecessary.”

Wouldn’t it be better to leave one another alone rather than trying to bully each other into submission?

We were supposed to learn that lesson in primary school (that’s what it used to be called before Red Republican Carl Schurz gave us “kindergarten” and the Yankees “elementary school”) or from our mothers and grandmothers. Maybe the anti-secessionists never got the memo.

Either way, decentralization is the more humane and polite thing to do. If we can’t see eye to eye, a peaceful divorce is preferable to a hostile marriage.

Family court is full of these stories. Every American gets it on a personal level, so why can’t it be expanded on a larger scale?

The answer is that Americans have been taught that secession is illegal and the “Civil War” solved the issue. Even the CalExit folks believe that it would require a constitutional amendment to secede.

Tell that to the founding generation, Ellsworth and King among them, who thought secession was not only moral but entirely legal and possible. Just read the Declaration of Independence.

Some suggest this would weaken security or destroy the American financial sector and ruin the economy.

News flash, the American economy is already in the tank. Federal bankruptcy is not too far in the distant future.

As for security, wouldn’t it be possible for these new confederacies to work out a mutual protection pact if any were invaded by a foreign power? Red state Americans have spilled a lot of blood in wars throughout United States history, most of which did not concern their immediate wellbeing.

So red state America, here is our opportunity to rid real America from the cancer to the west and north.

The California attorney general has gotten the ball rolling. Red state America should not only push it along, it should become the most vocal CalExit cheerleaders.

Give me an S E C E S S I O N. What’s that spell? Secession!

Maybe Howard Dean could finish off the cheer with a yell.

After all, Dean could become president of some northern confederation.

It could keep him. We’ll keep our guns and Bibles.

And we’ll wave at one another, peacefully, across the border.

The Best of Brion McClanahan

Brion McClanahan [send him mail] holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of South Carolina and is a faculty member at Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom. He is the author or co-author of seven books, including the forthcoming How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America (Regnery History, 2017) and 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her (Regnery History, 2016). Get your pre-order bonuses at www.blamehamilton.comand find him at www.brionmcclanahan.com.