10/12/2013
Re: Pat Buchanan’s Is Red State America Seceding?
From: A Young Illinois Reader [Send Him Mail]
I was heartened to read Pat Buchanan’s roundup of state-level secession movements in the US. It’s great to see that some Americans are thinking of the big picture rather than the tedious day-to-day horse race of party politics.
That said, state-level secession movements seem to miss the point.
First of all, It’s not enough to get away from Denver, Sacramento, Annapolis, or Lansing when an ever-increasing level of power is vested in the federal government. The fish rots from the head.
The federal government collects and spends the lion’s share of tax revenue, runs the major entitlement and social welfare programs, carries out our erratic and expensive foreign policy, and arrogates to itself the authority to enforce its vision of civil and human rights without regard to the principles of federalism or individual liberty.
Most critically, it is the federal government that regulates (or not) mass immigration and enforces (or not) immigration laws. In the long run, this is the decisive sovereign power, and, no corner of the country, however remote or self-governing, can withstand a sustained campaign of demographic displacement.
This is not an academic observation. It has already been illustrated in Arizona. The notoriously conservative home state of Barry Goldwater is trending purple and eventually blue. The majority of schoolchildren — i.e., the future electorate of the state — are Hispanic. The vast majority of them won’t be attending Tea Party rallies anytime soon.
At no point in the half-century since the borders were substantially opened were Arizonans directly asked whether they wanted this demographic revolution imposed upon them. I’m sure that they would have rejected their fate, given a chance to do so in a referendum. But they weren’t given that chance. What’s more, as far as immigration policy goes, Arizonans have not even enjoyed the benefit of democratic representation at the federal level; the federal government both refuses to enforce federal laws and enjoins states from enforcing those same laws. So what does it matter that Arizonans can elect Jan Brewer, when the Cultural Marxists and Slave Power in Washington can elect new Arizonans?
Would-be residents of Jefferson, Western Maryland, Northern Colorado, and Superior take note: the existential threat to the life and land that you wish to pass on to your grandchildren does not emanate from your local statehouse.
Second, these state-level secession movements have too much in common with each other to be viewed as state-level phenomena. In most of these cases, we are looking at regions that are white, non-metropolitan, and conservative. The common threads running through these local political movements illustrate that these movements manifest less a drive for separation than an attempt at national preservation in the face of a hostile state ideology. I suspect the folks who are rejecting political union with the urban centers of California or Michigan would get on fine with each other.
Indeed, even the disgruntled Vermonters' localist point of view is not alien to more traditional, conservative Americans. We want out of the empire, too: what is Invade-the-World/Invite-the-World if not an imperial doctrine? (I, for one, am content to live and let live with our fellow Americans in Vermont.)
As unthinkable as the idea would have been to me not so long ago, I must say that all of this points in one direction: the coordinated secession of as much of traditional America nation as possible, with as much of her territory as possible.
And, if we accept the necessity of that course, then the sooner it happens, the better. With or without the Schumer-Rubio monstrosity, time is against us. Mass immigration continues apace, and amnesty is already federal policy; birthright citizenship for anchor babies is simply amnesty instantiated in the next generation.
So, "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly ." I am quite concerned that the traditional nation will attempt to save itself in earnest only after the window has closed.
By James Fulford writes: There is something in what the reader says — the Federal Government is a big threat to the state government, and the Supremacy Clause means that they can nullify any sensible decisions of the State’s people. However, it still makes a big difference which state you’re in — ask a gun owner, for example — and in Electing A New People: Arizona Chooses Conservatives, Steve Sailer pointed out that state actions can reverse the demographic trends. SB 1070 encouraged Hispanic immigrants to leave the state, and conservative whites to move there.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.