An Early Spring Fantasy

In the last decade this country has seemed to be more profoundly divided than at any time in a good while. The divisions have only become deeper, more obvious, and more contentious during the first years of the present administration in Washington. For the first time in a very long time people are talking about splitting the country into two nations - joking usually, but sometimes with a wistful hint of actual desire.

The notion is not as strange or outrageous as it probably first appears to most people. Dissolutions happen. Quebec got to the point of a referendum on leaving Canada. When the British rule in India ended, irreconcilable differences over religion led to splitting the subcontinent into (then) two nations - Moslem Pakistan at the west and east ends separated by largely Hindu India in the middle.

So, just for fun, let us imagine what a division of the United States into two countries along the present political and cultural divisions might look like. The heart of the first new country would be the progressive, leftist, metro-everything areas of the Northeast running from the District of Columbia through Boston. At a first glance it might seem natural simply to include all the states in that strip along the East Coast in the new country. However a closer look reveals that this approach would not quite work. Several northeastern states, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York in particular, have counties in their hinterlands that are far more like Georgia or Indiana than Georgetown or Manhattan. However a careful study suggests a sensible, historically relevant solution. The boundary could be drawn along the fall line, the place of furthest inland navigability of the various rivers along the Atlantic between DC and Boston with exceptions made to include all of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut and the part of Vermont from Route 2 south. A glance at the map shows this might work pretty well for the eastern piece of the new nation. The western part would be much easier. It would contain two segments, one in the north and one in the south. The southern part would include everything in California between Los Angeles and the San Francisco bay area west of I-5 (including Sacramento). The northern part would encompass a similarly defined strip west of I-5 from Portland to Seattle inclusive. That would just about do it for the “blue” country. Everything else in the lower 48 would remain with the “red” country. Alaska and Hawaii could pick where they wanted to go by plebiscite. The only glaring exception would be Chicago which clearly would belong with its coastal brethren. It would have to be set up as a geographically disconnected outpost of the new coastal country, just as the Konigsberg area on the Baltic is of Russia now.

Both sides of the current divisions might be happy with the results. The “blue” country would include Georgetown and the rest of the District of Columbia, Philadelphia, Manhattan and the rest of New York City, Boston, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, the Hamptons and the rest of Long Island, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Hollywood, Marin County, all of Seattle, and in short just about every place its more influential residents think matters. The “red” country would contain none of these, which might make its residents happy as well.

There would of course be some practical matters to iron out. The first might be the nomenclature. Here it seems that, since progressives tend to be embarrassed by the United States and ashamed of its history and traditions, it would be natural to call the “red” country the United States of America, and let the blue country select a new name, as a placeholder for which one could use Progressistan. Questions of national defense might be resolved easily. Since virtually all existing military installations would be in the new United States, and since most of the people who serve in the armed forces come from there as well, and given the disparate “red’ and “blue “ attitudes on the subject, it could satisfy both sides for the American armed forces to be assigned in total to the new United States. As this would leave Progressistan without military or naval forces, it would be appropriate for the armed forces of the United States to guarantee the borders of Progressistan against Canada, Mexico, and other powers for twenty years or so after the treaty of dissolution. (One messy consequence of an otherwise quite fairly clean division would be that both the Military and the Naval academies would be in the territory of Progressistan rather than that of the United States. However, it would be a fairly simple matter to move both institutions, perhaps even brick by brick, to new locations.)

Then there is the national debt. It could be divided between the two new nations in proportion to their citizens’ total incomes in the decade before dissolution, a solution that is both simple and progressive. Various other commitments of the federal government such as pensions of federal employees could become liabilities of Progressistan as a partial offset to the United States shouldering the burden of continental defense.

There is also the fact that some people in each country would prefer to live in the other. To manage the transition, there would need to be an eighteen month or so period during which any citizen of either country could migrate to the other freely and establish citizenship. After that issues of immigration could be managed by treaty.

Finally the new United States would need a capital since its old one would be in a foreign country. This is a matter that should be given very serious thought. It should be selected carefully to support a tiny administrative bureaucracy and a congress that in peacetime meets only for sixty days or so every other year. It should be located in the desert Southwest, if the sessions are in the summer, and in the northern woods if in the winter. Whatever town is selected should be both remote and lacking in facilities. There are plenty of places in eastern New Mexico or northern Minnesota that would fill the bill nicely.

That would just about take care of it – just a fantasy. The sad thing is that for a lot of people on both sides of the divide, it would be an appealing one. We are in unusual times.

Stopping the Train Wreck

There are many people responsible for the actions and state of the government of the United States in the last year, capped by the passing of the health care bill. However there is one person who is most responsible, and that person is George W. Bush. By his costly and pointless obsessive crusades in Iraq and post-Tora Bora Afghanistan, by his expansion of government, by his deficits and bailouts, by his apparent indifference to the need to preserve political capital, by his general failure to convince the American people that he knew what he was doing, he made the present political situation in Washington possible. It is said in his favor that he protected the nation from another attack, and that is true. However that does not come close to offsetting his failures. He opened the door for those now in power, and there is nothing that Osama bin Laden could have done to this country to damage it as lastingly and profoundly as they are now doing or trying to do.

We have the worst government in thirty years. Barack Obama may or may not be anti-American by conscious conviction, but he gives clear evidence of being so by deep emotional inclination. (Indeed he manages to exemplify simultaneously two of the most common stereotypes of the contemporary anti-American – the smug, resentful academician and the chronically offended, self-proclaimed victim.) His domestic policies are generally anti-growth, statist, hostile to personal liberty and responsibility, inflationist, and power grabbing. His foreign policy is weak, ineffective, insulting to friends, and encouraging to enemies. He seems the nearly perfect avatar of Jimmy Carter. The leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives are equally bad and probably more corrupt.

So it is imperative to elect a Republican majority in the House and to reach or approach a majority in the Senate this November. This is so not because the Republicans are going to be competent or good, but because the present gang of Democrats is execrably bad. The campaign should not be based on divisive social issues nor on a return to something like Bush’s Nixon as an alternative to Obama’s Carter. It needs to be focused on freedom, shrinking government , cutting deficits and spending, actual Americanism, the national interest, and creating the conditions for economic growth. It is time to create a coalition and to welcome anyone who will join it. I would prefer that the nation elect Republicans who are thoughtful, liberally minded, rational, and consistently disposed toward liberty. However if it comes to it, I will cheerfully accept a gaggle of tub thumping creationists or black helicopter boys so long as they help put a stop to what Obama and the leftists are doing to this country. It is time for all of us who care about keeping this a free, safe, and prosperous country to hang together, putting our differences aside, so that we can save the situation. We can argue those differences after we stop the train wreck.

Advice to Republicans

The coming elections are looking very promising for the Republicans, and that is a good thing. The Obama administration has been a disaster, and a brake on it is much needed. However, with Republicans there is always the fear that they will find a way to blow it. So, I have some advice for them. They need to realize that they do not need to worry about the creationists, the hard core abortion prohibitionists, or the anti-homosexual zealots ( just as the Democrats do not need to worry about the dogmatically religious greens, the crooked trial lawyers, or the dregs of the public employees’ and teachers’ unions). Every vote counts, and they certainly should work to turn out these voters. However, they should not focus their campaigns on them. They already have them.

Instead the Republicans need to realize that the failures, excesses, and power grabs of the Obama administration and the Democrats in the congress have given them a big opportunity to win back the voters they lost during the awful Bush administration and to win over new ones. However, the voters the Republicans need are not going to be won by appeals based on the social issues of the religious right. They are more likely to be repelled. Issues that can work and that Republicans need to campaign on include freedom, real tolerance, Americanism, a foreign policy based on the national interest, a strong national defense, shrinking government to something affordable, reducing deficits, stopping bailouts , and generally respecting the private sphere in each person’s live that is none of the government’s business. This can be a winning approach.

It is also a right approach, elections aside. This nation has an astounding diversity of social practices and lifestyles, many of them quite mutually incompatible. The only way to avoid strife and worse is to take the government out of most social issues thereby preventing any group from imposing its customs and prejudices on others by fiat, just as we have taken it out of religion.