Of the 17 percent who thought that was a fine idea, there was an overwhelming favorite for who gets tossed from the moving vehicle: California.Yes, the Golden State was the choice of a whopping 53 percent of respondents who thought yanking a star off the flag would make the world a better place.New York came in second with 25 percent of votes, and Texas was third at 20 percent.
I don't know why anybody would want rid of Texas. The Reason article also links a very helpful map ranking the states by freedom (New Hampshire is #1: Live Free or Die!).
The thing is, we don't actually have a mechanism for any of this. We have very clear standards for admitting new states. There's no apparent mechanism for releasing states that want to leave, or expelling states against their will.
A political project of mine is to restore the defunct state of Franklin, made up of parts of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee. Franklin would be pose a challenge to New Hampshire's #1 ranking as freest state, as the political culture of Appalachia has little enough use for governments. There is a constitutional mechanism for that, though it's a long shot: it needs approval by both houses of Congress as well as both the NC and TN legislatures.
6 comments:
It's a lot easier to colonize territories then shortly apply for admission as states. Imagine a bunch of "Christian Nationalists" moving to, say, Saipan. For that matter, suppose Antifa set up an "Autonomous Zone" on Wake Island. Such a scheme is somewhat (and distantly) like "packing the Supreme Court" in that a Congress struggling to hold a tiny majority might admit one or more "new states" with newly created legislatures formed by that party -- thus creating two new (party-loyal) Senators for each new state. The original Senate split 51-49 becomes a new Senate at 55-49. The House would not pick up more, gross, new Representatives but would see some states
suffer loss under re-apportionment.
The most likely new states are actually D.C. itself, and Puerto Rico, both of which would pack the Senate with new Democrat Party votes.
During the Trump administration there was chatter about the US buying Greenland. That would be ... interesting, for several reasons, but might among those reasons be a bulwark against the "packing" scheme involving P.R. Denmark refused to sell. Perhaps, though, our Canadian cousins might be willing to part with their N.W. Territory, and maybe the Yukon. Put sufficient numbers of US citizen "migrants", "refugees", squatters, homesteaders, survivalists, and religious fanatics (among which I count the "Global Warming" alarmists) US-origin residents might outvote (i.e. "replace" native Canadians in the area in a decade. Start the effort early.
The real advantage, in my fevered imagination, of us acquiring Greenland would be in getting better control over the GIUK Gap.
That would be a fair trade for California. Maybe we could interest Denmark in a larger trade: Greenland for California, Illinois, and New York. And maybe a State to be named later.
Eric Hines
Back in the 1960s, I hitched to California and met for the first time my California cousins. (I had already met their parents.) I was in some LA park when an elderly woman- probably younger than I am now- who said to me, "This is God's Country." I was inclined to believe her.
No more. I would add that my California cousins, having seen what Democrat rule has done to God's Country, are yellow-dog Republicans.
I rather like the idea of giving California back to Mexico.
My understanding is that Canada is a true confederation, as the US was prior to our current Constitution, and as such the provinces have an undisputed right to exit with the Confederation government in Ottawa having no legal recourse to stop it. Of course they might attempt to contest it but I doubt they would be successful, and new states of Manitoba and Saskatchewan could be more likely than either DC or PR. DC has the issue of being ceded territory from Virginia and Maryland, with some territory previously being returned to Virginia though neither state now wants to take the rest. Statehood for PR would likely have happen over the objections of the locals if I understand the politics of the situation.
There is no mechanism for "releasing" states because states, being states and not mere satrapies of the federal government, don't need anyone's permission to leave a political union that they formerly joined. The founding generation understood this; we no longer do.
Well, it's not as if that changed understanding happened by accident or by what Abraham Lincoln called "the silent artillery of time." It happened because of actual artillery -- a lot of it deployed at the orders of the aforementioned Abraham Lincoln.
The courts came behind and ratified the results of the war after the fact; the Constitution never caught up because it wasn't in the interests of the victors to establish a new mechanism for leaving the (now "permanent" or "indivisible") Union.
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