Blue states buzz over secession

[Guest guest]

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041109-122753-5113r.htm

 

Blue states buzz over secession

 

 

By Joseph Curl

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

 

Secession, which didn't work very well when it was tried once before,

is suddenly red hot in the blue states. In certain precincts, anyway.

One popular map circulating on the Internet shows the 19 blue

states won by Sen. John Kerry — Washington, Oregon, California,

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Maryland and the

Northeastern states — conjoined with Canada to form the " United States

of Canada. " The 31 red states carried by Mr. Bush are depicted as a

separate nation dubbed " Jesusland. "

The idea isn't just a joke; one top Democrat says, " The segment of

the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed

by the people who don't pay for the federal government. "

" Some would say, 'Oh, poor Alabama. It's cut off from the wealth

infusion that it gets from New York and California,' " said Lawrence

O'Donnell, a veteran Democratic insider and now senior political

analyst at MSNBC. " But the more this political condition goes on at

the presidential level of the red and blue states, the more you're

testing the inclination of the blue states to say, 'So what?' "

Mr. O'Donnell raised the subject of secession on " The McLaughlin

Group " during the weekend. " Ninety percent of the red states are

welfare-client states of the federal government, " said Mr. O'Donnell,

who was an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat.

In a telephone interview, Mr. O'Donnell said the red states that

went to Mr. Bush " collect more from the federal government than they

send in. New York and California, Connecticut — the states that are

blue are all the states that are paying for the bulk of everything

this government does, from ... Social Security to everything else, and

the people in those states don't like what this government is doing. "

The Internet has exploded with talk of a blue-state confederacy,

including one screed circulating by e-mail that features a map of a

new country called " American Coastopia " and proposes lopping off the

Northeast, the West Coast and the upper Midwest to form a new country,

away from the " rednecks in Oklahoma " and the " homophobic

knuckle-draggers in Wyoming. "

" We were all going to move to various other countries, but then

we thought — why should WE move? " the anonymous message asks. " We hold

our noses as we fly over you. We are sickened by the way you treat

people that are different from you. The rest of the world despises

America, and we don't want to be lumped in with you anymore. "

The secession movement has already spawned commercial

opportunism. One Web site is selling T-shirts that read " I seceded. "

No one at the White House would comment on the calls for

secession, but one top Republican official with ties to the Bush

administration said the recent talk is not surprising, coming off an

election in which the president received more than 59 million votes —

the most in history.

" If we were that far out of the mainstream, maybe we'd be pushing

the creation of our own country, " the official said. " Then we might

have a chance of ever winning an election again. "

But Andy Nowicki, a libertarian blogger, said the blue states

will never secede because " liberals don't want to leave their enemies

alone. Instead, as their track record shows, they want to take over

the government in order to force their enemies to endure perpetual

sensitivity training for being such racist, sexist, homophobic,

'closed-minded' boors, i.e., for disagreeing with them. "

The emergence of a solidly Republican South prompted longtime

Democratic activist Bob Beckel to advocate Southern independence the

morning after Election Day.

" I think now that slavery is taken care of, I'm for letting the

South form its own nation. Really, I think they ought to have their

own confederacy, " Mr. Beckel said on the " Fox and Friends " program.

While secession is often thought to be a Southern phenomenon,

Northern leaders repeatedly threatened secession in the 19th century,

in protest of such provocations as the War of 1812, as well as the

admission of Louisiana and Texas to the Union. In 1803, Massachusetts

Sen. Timothy Pickering proposed " a new confederacy, " naming the New

England states members along with New York ( " the center of the

confederacy " ).

In 1839, former President John Quincy Adams defended the right of

secession in a speech in New York, saying, " Far better will it be ...

to part in friendship with each other than to be held together by

constraint. "

But according to Slate.com — another liberal Web site that has

explored the topic of secession — there are no provisions in U.S. law

for a state or states to opt out of the Union, citing such authorities

as Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School and Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law

School who say that since Appomattox " scholars have agreed that the

Constitution grants no right of secession. "

While legal scholars say states cannot leave the Union, nothing

stops individuals. Before the 2000 election, actor Alec Baldwin was

one of several Hollywood figures who threatened to leave the country

if Mr. Bush was elected — but didn't.

" Unfortunately, there were no such pronouncements this time

around, " said Martin Grove, a columnist for HollywoodReporter.com,

" perhaps because the last time around, when push came to shove, all of

these people decided maybe they were in the best place they could

possibly be to begin with. "

[Guest guest]

Will someone please remind me WHY we wanted to keep the south

And tell me what other treaties signed in the 1800's are still honored

http://story.news./news?tmpl=story & u=/ap/20041110/ap_on_re_us/falwell_n\

ew_coalition_3

 

Falwell Plans for 'Evangelical Revolution'

 

Tue Nov 9,10:43 PM ET

 

By HANK KURZ Jr., Associated Press Writer

RICHMOND, Va. - Seeking to take advantage of the momentum from an election where

moral values proved important to voters, the Rev. Jerry Falwell announced

Tuesday he has formed a new coalition to guide an " evangelical revolution. "

 

 

Falwell, a religious broadcaster based in Lynchburg, Va., said the Faith and

Values Coalition will be a " 21st century resurrection of the Moral Majority, "

the organization he founded in 1979.

 

Falwell said he would serve as the coalition's national chairman for four years.

 

He added that the new group's mission would be to lobby for anti-abortion

conservatives to fill openings on the Supreme Court and lower courts, a

constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and the election of another

" George Bush (news - web sites)-type " conservative in 2008.

 

" We all, for the first time, began to realize the potential of religious

conservatives, particularly evangelicals, when something over 30 million of them

went to the polls, " he said, noting most supported the president and

anti-abortion candidates, and voted to approve 11 initiatives across the country

banning gay marriage.

 

Also, a decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court allowing gay marriages

" helped energize our people, " Falwell said.

 

And when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began performing gay marriages, it

" really caught the attention of people of faith in this country, and what we

have been saying could happen actually happened, " he said.

 

" The timing could not have been better. That, along with the abortion issues and

the terrorism issue, helped us to get our people awakened. "

 

While overseeing the coalition, Falwell said he would leave day-to-day

operations of Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church — both of which

he founded — to his sons Jerry Jr., 42, and Jonathan, 38.

 

Mathew Staver, founder of the conservative law group Liberty Counsel in Orlando,

Fla., will be the coalition's vice chairman; Jonathan Falwell will be its

executive director. Theologian Tim LaHaye will be the board chairman.