Tag Archives: Calexit

If California Wants to Go, Let It Go

23 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Devolution, Federalism, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

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Yes_CaliforniaA year or so ago a liberal friend of mine implied that I was a right-wing kook and crypto-racist for even broaching the idea of disaffected states one day seeking a path out of the Union.

Just this weekend, though, none other than the chief legal officer of the nation’s largest state, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, offered a remarkably tepid response regarding California’s continued formal ties with the American Union.

“California is the economic engine of the United States of America, we on our own, as a state, could be the sixth economic power in the world,” Becerra stated yesterday in a Fox News Sunday interview.

“The U.S. needs California as much as I believe California needs to be part of the United States.”

Talk about a full-throated endorsement of American unity!  It sounded to me more like a Catalan official affirming unity with Spain.

If Bercerra’s statements aren’t intriguing enough, consider the yawning apathy all of this California separatist talk has generated in the nation’s broad red-state hinterland.  More than one friend of mine has stated they they would stand at the Nevada border happily waving off a new California Republic.

I think that goes for a lot of us here in the red heartland.  If our experience with rising levels of divorce over the past 50 years has driven home one thing, it’s that acrimonious marriages are better off terminated.  And, frankly, these federal bonds, which Lincoln extolled as “mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land,” seem increasingly and irreparably frayed.

America is coming to resemble a bad marriage, marked increasingly by acrimony and recrimination.

And all of this is likely to get even more complicated. Indeed, political activist and former presidential Chief of Staff Stephen Bannon is right to compare this growing secessionist sentiment in California with the South Carolina nullification crisis of the 1830’s.

Bannon recently argued that if the federal government fails to stop California’s sanctuary state efforts, California’s leftist leaders  “are going to try to secede from the union” in the next decade to 15 years.

While we may have thought this vexing issue was settled more than 150 years ago, California may be serving up a 2.0 version of secession. We really seem to be closing a very wide and contentious historical circle.  And contrary to my liberal friend’s fulminating, I really think that California may be the portent of a cascading effect among several states.

California presents this union with a special set of challenges- it arguably always has.  We’re talking about a state with several unique characteristics: for starters, its longstanding geographical separation from the other major population centers of the United States  and its location on the Pacific Rim, facing the region of the world where the overwhelming bulk of global economic growth is likely to occur over the next few decades.  Add to that California’s demographic transformation, one factor among many driving its return to its historical legacy as a region intimately linked with the cultural and economic the fortunes of Mexico and Latin America.

Under the circumstances, should we be surprised that California is evolving its own views of law and governance and that it’s begun to strain at its federal leash?

If California wants to go at some point,  let it go peacefully.  And that goes for any other state where a significant segment of the population has concluded that they are better off separate from than a part of the American Union.

Freedom of association should characterize our federal relations every bit as much as it should other facets of American life.   It is integrally bound up with living in a free society.

A Republic of Pluralism

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in American Federalism, American History, Devolution, Federalism, Localism, Uncategorized

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The Green Mountain Boys flag: The past and future flag of the Vermont Republic?  Photo: Courtesy of Amber Kincaid.

A social media conversation this morning prompted a few thoughts on the egregious lack of pluralism that characterizes America in the 21st century.

One poster observed that the white nationalist provocateur Richard Spencer is attempting another visit to Charlottesville, apparently with the intention of stirring up yet another racial hornets nest.

Yet, as another poster stressed, the University of Virginia, as a public institution that receives substantial federal funds, can’t easily refuse his request to stage another protest.

I’m no legal scholar, but it seems to me that we can ascribe the university’s predicament to the Incorporation Doctrine.  The Bill of Rights originally applied only to the federal government.  It was extended to the states only through  incorporation, which was made possible by passage of the 14th Amendment. (Check me on this, but I believe I stand on solid ground.)

In time, I suspect the courts will formulatr some kind of compelling needs doctrine, which establishes some threshold for requests such as these, where there is the real risk of violence. Indeed, I presume that provisions such as these already are in place.

At this point, I feel compelled to offer a disclaimer: I am a free-speech purist – I think that open, robust speech is not only healthy but also vital to a free, open society.  But I also think that the prospect of federal authority extending its clammy fingers into every facet of American life is a grievous and dangerous thing and one that the Founders – the vast majority of them, at least – would have found abhorrent.

I am also as much a proponent for pluralism as free speech. Our Founders – certainly Jefferson – envisioned a very pluralistic “republic of republics” in which the state republics would conceive their own individual visions of ordered liberty.  While congenial to prevailing notions of liberty, these also would be adapted to local cultural, social and religious realities.

I’ll add a final disclaimer: I am as fervent a proponent as incrementalism as I am free speech and pluralism.   It seems to me that barring an Incorporation Doctrine all of the states in time would have adopted some degree of legal uniformity regarding free speech.  The openness required of federalism and a American common market would have necessitated such uniformity over time.

I know: I come off sounding like a  reactionary and a constitutional fossil – a so-called paleofederalist.  Most Americans would contend that we have moved far past that that quaint, bygone era when states functioned with many of the attributes of nationhood.  But Calexit, Texit, the Second Vermont Republic and other incipient sovereignty movements emerging across the breadth of America may be changing all of this.

The California National Party, which comprises one pillar of the California independence movement, seems to be demanding a new vision of democracy, constitutional law and identity that runs counter to much of the rest of the nation.

Who knows where all of this will lead?  These incipient autonomy movements may be pointing to a return to the original founding vision of American federalism. Maybe we ultimately will return to a constitutional arrangement in which states, at least, some states, will function as genuine sovereign states, with many of the hallmarks of nationhood.

Time will tell.

The Elite Media’s Qualified View of Secession

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Devolution, U.S. Politics

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Photo: Courtesy of Dzlinker

Once again, I’m fascinated with The New York Times’ growing emphasis on federalism, regionalism, and – perish the thought, secession!

Carme Forcadell, president of the Catalan Parliament, writes a about judicial efforts by the Spanish government to impede the the open discussion of debate of Catalan independence within Parliament.

Forcadell relates that the Spanish government’s special prosecutor filed a complaint charging her with contempt of court and neglect of duty for allowing separatist debate to occur. It is one of many judicial methods the Madrid government has employed to stifle debate over independence.  Some 400 municipal officials have also been charged with involvement in discussions advancing Catalan independence.

Forcadell extols the open and unimpeded discussion and debate about Scottish independence that has ensued for years in Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament as well as the acquiescence  of the British government, which even acceded to the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum – a sharp contrast to Spain’s obstructionist attitude vis-a-vis the Catalans.

Despite the referendum’s unsuccessful outcome, “democracy was the winner,” Focadell affirms.

But Forcadell draws a sharp distinction between Catalan and Scottish independence struggles and others unfolding in Europe. She apparently regards sovereignty and independence movements as acceptable only if they are progressive in nature. Brexit and other Eurosceptic and “right-wing populist” movements don’t count as legitimate independence movements.

And, of course, this explains the Establishment media’s fascination with California’s growing separatist sentiment. California has legitimate grievances because these are pro-statist and progressive in nature.

And, conversely, this accounts for why the Texas Independence Movement has barely rated as a blip on the Establishment media’s news radar, except, of course, when the intention is to underscore the specter of right-wing extremism in America.

If Hillary were the 45th president instead of Trump and Texas were the state making the most noise about independence, I am virtually certain that federalism, sovereignty and secession would receive little, if any, positive mention in the hallowed pages of the New York Times or any Establishment agit/prop organ.

No, secession gets favorable mention only if it takes on a progressive hue.

But all of us red state hoi polloi  should take heart that Trump’s upset victory has galvanized “respectable” secessionist discourse in at least one blue state. That, at least, will ensure that the wider topic of secession will become a more frequent and mainstream topic of discourse over the next few years.

The Unpalatable American Truth about Secession

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in American History, Uncategorized

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Washington’s First Inauguration in 1789.  He initially presided over 11 states, as North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet acceded to the new Union.

It’s one of the great and, for many left-leaning Americans, unpalatable facts associated with American history.

And this great and unpalatable fact was raised, however unwittingly, by Georgetown University School of Law Professor David Super in a recent discussion of the Convention of States effort.  As Super stresses, the Founders broke the law during the ratification of the U.S. Constitution by abandoning the Articles of Confederation to form a new national compact under a new Constitution. How? By ignoring the provision in the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union that required not only the approval of the Congress of the United States but also the unanimous consent of all of the states before any revision of the Articles could occur.

The Delegates’ Commission under the Articles of Confederation

Bear in mind that delegates commissioned to represent their states at the convention in Philadelphia were “solely and expressly” charged with the task of revising the Articles of Confederation, not with drafting an entirely new framework of government.

Over the course of discussing the intractable limitations associated with the Articles, though, the delegates concluded that simple revision was an impractical goal.  Redressing their acute limitations would require a whole new written charter, one that likely would not be accepted by all the states.

So the delegates resolved to draft an entirely new Constitution, though one that would require the formal assent  of only three-fourths of the states for it to go into effect. Eleven States eventually ratified the new constitution in the intervening twenty months between the convention delegates’ signing of the new charter and the inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States.

The U.S. Constitution: Born of Secession

Think about that: Eleven states, in effect, seceded from the Confederation to form the new American compact we know today as the American Union. Yet, two states, Rhode Island and North Carolina, had not  ratified the Constitution and, consequently, were out of the Union when Washington took the his first presidential oath of office in

North Carolina finally came into the Union in November of 1789.  However, Rhode Island dragged its feet and grudgingly ratified the Constitution after the new federal government threatened to sever commercial relations.  And even then, ratification squeaked by with only two votes.

James Madison’s “Delicate Truth”

The 11 acts of secession that culminated in the new American Union poses what in 21st century parlance would be known as an “inconvenient truth.”

James Madison described it as “the delicate truth” beyond the American Union.

Writing in The Federalist Papers, he described the 11 states’ secession from the Articles of the Confederation to form a new compact as a simple matter of “self-preservation.” He justified this self-preservation on the basis of what he characterized as “the transcendent law of nature; and of nature’s God, which declares that the safety of and happiness of society are the subjects at which political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.”

California Secession: Not Treasonous at All

Simply put, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were no longer capable of securing a lasting,sustainable union and had to be scrapped out of necessity and replaced with something entirely new. And this could be achieved only by a super majority of states seceding from the old constitutional system and creating a newer, more sustainable one.

So, viewed within the wide context of American constitutional history, California’s current secessionist sentiment isn’t treasonous at all but is merely the latest expression of a very well-established American tradition.

Twice Born of Secession

The United States was twice born of secession: first in 1776, when thirteen former colonies issued a joint declaration declaring their intent to withdraw from the British Empire, and later in 1789, when the majority of the states withdrew from the Articles to form a new and improved confederation (Washington’s term for the new union).

And, incidentally, speaking of unpalatable facts, the great nationalist Founding Father Alexander Hamilton repeatedly described the new American  government as a “Confederate Republic” and as a “Confederation” and described the new constitution as a “compact” throughout the Federalist Papers.

But that is another remarkable and rather unpalatable constitutional fact that I’ll save for discussion at a later date.

John C. Calhoun: Blue State Icon?

18 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

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John C. Calhoun, architect of Southern exceptionalism.

It’s often said that politics produces strange bedfellows.  And it appears that two weeks after the election of Donald Trump, a growing number of left-leaning blue-staters are embracing, however unwittingly, the political legacy of one of one of red state America’s most incendiary firebrands.

For 180 or so years, elites in the blue states – or what became blue states – have been wagging their fingers at Southerners and other red state Americans, decrying our appalling lack of patriotism and commitment to national unity and, even worse, our recalcitrance in the face of federal power and all that is deemed good, noble and decent in nation and the world. And, rest assured, if, after a year or so following a Hillary victory these fissiparous tendencies had surfaced once again in the South or any of the red states, the outcry would have been unremittingly harsh, with the left screaming about the dangerous rise of secessionist sentiment and the ugly racist, reactionary, conspiratorial and paramilitary-related impulses driving all of it.

Now that the proverbial shoe is on the other foot – now that red state rather than blue state America is in a position to tighten the federal screws – a growing number of Californians and other coastal blue states almost seem disposed toward the ideology of one of the greatest red state recalcitrants of them all: John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina firebrand who helped refine the nullification doctrine and even drew his native state and much of the rest of the South to the precipice of secession in the 1830’s.  And this embrace is occurring with hardly the batting of an eye.

And make no mistake: The people calling for secession or, at the very least, genuine devolution, are not simply ordinary people but also businessmen with real influence. One prominent Silicon Valley investor, Shervin Pishevar, walked back his earlier assertions of California secession, though affirming “a new Federalism where state and local governments are empowered to determine their destinies while bonded together in a United States of America.”

Think about this for a moment. A red state billionaire or political leader wouldn’t have conceived of raising such views following a Hillary victory without the inevitable verbal upbraiding by elites and the mainstream media. Yet, in the weeks following Trump’s unexpected victory, these sentiments are being espoused by the very people who otherwise would have regarded such opinions as dangerous, divisive, if not traitorous, talk only a short time ago.

But there is a silver lining to all of this rising fissiparous blue-state sentiment: It will likely pave the way for some genuine attempts at returning power to states and localities. States were envisioned by the Founding Fathers as entities with the attributes of nationhood but that were compelled, out of necessity, to pool a share of their sovereignty, namely, defense, foreign policy and economic policy,  to a general government – an approach considered far more efficient than each of these states exercising this sovereignty separately.

Honestly, despite all the hypocrisy that newfound blue state affinity for states rights and localism conveys, I wish California lots of luck.  I’ve got no problem with the idea of blue state America preempting Calhoun.  California and the other blue coastal states have every right to reacquire the accoutrements of nationhood that once characterized all of the states of the American Union.

I just hope that these states understand that red states are as much entitled to these attributes of nationhood as they are.