By John Fund
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Los Angeles —
Liberals used to hate secession, the notion that states could leave the Union
as they did before the Civil War because they didn’t agree with the policies of
the federal government. But with Donald Trump’s election, many California
liberals suddenly have warm words for a budding ballot initiative that has just
begun collecting signatures in order to place secession, or “Calexit,” on the
ballot.
At the height of the tea-party movement, Texas governor
Rick Perry merely hinted at the thought that Texas might react to President
Obama’s executive overreach by reclaiming its one-time status as an independent
republic. He was denounced as something akin to a traitor; critics lamented
that he wanted to return Texas to the era of sharecroppers or Jim Crow. Now Dan
Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern
California, says “California is the new Texas,” with its elected officials
promoting a “virtual secession.” The secessionists plan to take to the
legislature, the courts, and the streets to resist Trump’s agenda. Never before
have so many prominent Californians gotten into such a reactionary, defensive
crouch.
Some of their rhetoric resembles that of the “massive
resistance” movement in the 1950s South, which vowed to fight federal intrusion
into the right of states to run their own discriminatory elections, segregate
public schools, and ignore federal law enforcement. Assembly speaker Anthony
Rendon has warned Trump that he better not dare to go after any of the state’s
estimated 2 million illegal immigrants: “If you want to get to them, you have
to go through us.” Governor Jerry Brown vows to block any attempt to divert
California from its radical plan to limit carbon emissions: “We’ve got the
scientists. We’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight.” State attorney
general Xavier Bacerra says one of his top priorities is the “resistance”
against Washington’s deportation of illegal immigrants, even to the point of
paying their legal fees to fight the federales.
On policy after policy, from dramatically higher minimum
wages to the nation’s most steeply progressive income tax, California’s leaders
are pursuing a 180-degree departure from the priorities of Team Trump. They say
this is the perfect time for a breakup, and they cite a new Reuters-Ipsos poll
showing that 32 percent of Californians (mostly Democrats) back the idea.
As a Californian, I view the “Calexit” movement with
amusement, since there is zero chance that Congress would ever provide enough
votes to allow California to leave peacefully, and the alternative exit ramp
would involve a modern-day civil war.
During my recent trips back to California, I have often
debated with liberals over the idea. I point out that before they sign up for
secession, there is a more serious, more tolerant way of giving Californians
more choices: Let the sprawling, diverse state divide up into two or more
states to ease tensions between farmers and coastal types, defuse the war of
ideology between Left and Right, and allow more policy experimentation,
Efforts to divide California into more manageable and
homogeneous parts are as old as the Bear Flag that was raised over the state
capitol at statehood in 1850. When I was a legislative staffer in Sacramento in
1980, a state assemblyman named Stan Statham had a serious proposal that
attracted bipartisan support. He recognized that California’s people (now 40
million) would be better served if its competing constituencies had more in
common.
Lots of people have their favorite maps for new states.
For decades, the natural dividing line ran due east from the coast, just north
of Bakersfield; it emphasized the differences between northern and southern
California. My favorite design was for three
states: one centered on Los Angeles, one centered on San Francisco, and
everyone else in a third state. More recently, in 2009, then GOP assemblyman
Bill Maze proposed creating two states: a Coastal California state and an
Inland California state. The big population centers of San Francisco and Los
Angeles would be in the first, but the inland state would include some large
coastal counties such as Orange (home of Disneyland) and San Diego.
The new states would be far more in sync on policy. The
coastal state would emphasize environmental values, the “next big thing”
economy of Silicon Valley, and the multicultural diversity of L.A. The inland
state would have vast water resources, abundant agricultural lands, and its own
cutting-edge facilities in sectors ranging from aerospace to data processing.
Politically, the two states would provide an escape from
the current political conformity of California, which is dominated by
public-sector unions and progressive activists. Take the last governor’s race
in 2014. Democrat Jerry Brown won reelection over Republican Neel Kashkari by
60 percent to 40 percent statewide. But in Inland California, they were separated
by just a few thousand votes. The two Californias would include a progressive
stronghold able to experiment (even more than the state already does) with new
“small is beautiful” ideas; next to it would be a politically competitive state
with many constituencies that would favor pro-growth policies. Tensions and
gridlock under a two-state model would probably be reduced.
Of course, it’s unlikely that California will ever be
divided. It’s even more unlikely that it would cut its ties to the rest of the
nation and become a separate country. But the debate on both ideas is healthy.
To what extent should we let arbitrary political boundaries established many
decades ago curb our imagination and prevent us from creative solutions to our
problems?
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