It’s becoming pretty clear that, like their Democrat forefathers, today’s Democrats are convinced that America is entirely too free and that they must take their blue states and secede. We normals no longer meet their high moral standards, what with our insistence on believing in God, having a voice in our governance, and our primitive desire not to have men lurking in women’s restrooms. Plus guns.
Fine. Let them go. Good riddance. We’ll be able to pray and have our voices heard by government even as we continue to embrace anti-#Science concepts like chromosomes determining your sex. Plus guns.
You liberals should take your blue state coastal enclaves and become the United States of Sweden. Just remember that you will have made your Ikea futon and you’ll have to sleep in it.
Here are 11 principles to embrace as we move forward after the blue states leave us.
1. We must re-ratify the Constitution, only this time we need to actually mean it. Our Constitution needs to say what it says and not what some Ivy League judge angling for Georgetown cocktail party invitations wishes it says. We will become a beacon of freedom when the blue states’ Supreme Court finds the whole Bill of Rights unconstitutional.
2. We need to start over with the federal government. Department of Education? Nope, that’s a local function. Department of Commerce? How about we leave commerce to the businesspeople? The NEA? Are you kidding me – people should pay for their own perverted arts. The departure of the blue states is a chance to shed the unwanted pounds and unsightly flab packed onto what should be a lean, mean Uncle Sam after a century of gorging at the Golden Corral of progressivism.
3. We will expect everyone to pull his weight and support his family. Yes, there will be a safety net for those down on their luck. I’d propose a network of community gruel pots, but most people are probably not ready for that kind of innovative self-reliance incentive program. Regardless, the safety net won’t be comfortable, and frankly, people will look down on you for using it. So do what you need to do to avoid it – work hard, make good choices, save for a rainy day, and most of all, have the fierce self-respect that would have you do whatever it takes to avoid taking a government handout. And if you do those things, you’ll never have to.
4. Charity is a duty, but not a mandate. When the government “helps” you, it steals a piece of your soul. But when a neighbor lends a hand, that is soul craft for both of you. We’ll look out for our neighbors. We’ll watch their children when their car breaks down. We’ll give a kid who had a run-in with the law a chance at a job. We’ll pool our money to help a deserving teen go to college (There will be no more government student loans that drown their recipients in debt to pay off their Marxist Interpretive Dance degrees). Many hands-up, no hands-out.
5. We will embrace free enterprise, not crony capitalism. We need to strike down laws that protect entrenched business interests by keeping others from competing. In Tennessee, enterprising African-American women are being barred from providing braiding services by obnoxious laws that would first make them spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours getting licensed to shampoo hair. Not in Free America! Chief Justice Glenn Reynolds won’t allow it.
6. Free trade is great, except when the other side gets all sorts of advantages and our government does nothing because that would upset some corporate donor’s apple cart. The principle guiding our trade policy should be simple and clear – you can import whatever you want as long as we get identical terms back. Then, if you beat an American company, well, that’s on the American company. But if we beat yours, well, then we beat yours.
7. We will sell the blue states the necessities that they don’t want to make. The blue states’ elite is more concerned with posturing than productivity. Already, states like New York are banning the fracking technology that could make America energy independent. In California, the pampered coastal elite has declared war on Central Valley farmers. They are closing nuclear and coal plants, outsourcing their energy production. After they secede, it will only get worse – and we free Americans should pick up the slack, eagerly supplying the ravenous blue cities with the food, fuel, and power they won’t dirty their hands creating themselves. Plus, it gives us leverage when the blue states predictably start accusing us of causing their self-inflicted poverty and misery.
8. Let’s prosper with a tax code that does not punish success and ensures everyone has skin in the game. How about a flat 10%-15% income tax? What a great way to ensure everyone has an interest in a responsible, thrifty federal government – not just the 53% of us who pay the full freight today.
9. We should also welcome the high-tech companies currently residing in the blue states. They’ll be eager to come once they see our lower taxes and greater prosperity. Of course, they do tend to be liberal, and there is a lot of concern that allegedly “neutral” internet giants are actually trying to skew their products to support left wing causes. Now, what they do is their choice, but the particular intellectual property rights we choose to protect is our choice. We can always exclude from copyright and trademark protection any internet service that is not absolutely politically objective. So if they want to keep putting a thumb on the scale, we can always use our Apply iPaddles to do our searches on Goggle, post our cat photos on the Faceback, or troll libs on Tweeter.
10. Freedom means freedom. The blue states will clamp down on dissent, which will become permanently unpatriotic the second the liberal secession is complete. We need to be clear – while we will happily ship back all true criminals to face justice, no one will ever be extradited from the United States to the blue states to face prosecution for any crime related to the exercise of free speech.
11. Service earns citizenship. We’ll welcome our blue brothers and sisters as they escape the failure of their own governments, but not into the voting booth. For anyone not a veteran (or the spouse of one) or a resident at the secession, you will need to earn the right to vote, hold office, or hold a government position of significant reasonability by volunteering for and completing two years of honorable military service. And that means (with allowances for the severely physically handicapped) carrying a gun – not some bogus, puffball “alternative service” for rich kids handing out Kleenexes to delinquents while the poor kids hump rucks. If you haven’t dug a foxhole and shivered through the night in one, you are too insufficiently invested in Free America to have a say in its stewardship. We’re not having a bunch of Los Angeles refugees show up and bringing the stink of blue model failure with them. You want to pick up a ballot? First, pick up a rifle.
And as a bonus, we will become North America’s Switzerland, with a rifleman (or riflewoman!) behind every tree, thereby discouraging the blue states from getting frisky when they inevitably blame us and our soaring prosperity for the inevitable failure of their socialist system. Naturally, it goes without saying that every able-bodied citizen of the United States will be expected to maintain personal arms and ammunition sufficient to allow him to act to protect his family, community, and Constitution.
So, the loss of the blue states from the United States would be less a loss than an opportunity. Think of it as de facto federalism – the blue state model and the red state models can compete and people can judge the victor in terms of freedom and prosperity. I know who I’m betting on.
Adios. California.
Hello, Texas.