Monday, February 13, 2017

The Californian Confederacy?


The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson sees many parallels between California today and the antebellum South.

In December 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union in furor over the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln did not receive 50 percent of the popular vote. He espoused values the state insisted did not reflect its own.

In eerie irony, liberal California is now mirror-imaging the arguments of reactionary South Carolina and other Southern states that vowed to go it alone in 1860 and 1861.

. . .

Of course, this is 2017, not 1860, and California is super-liberal, not an antebellum slave-owning society.

Nonetheless, what is driving California’s current efforts to nullify federal law and the state’s vows to secede from the U.S. are some deeper — and creepy — similarities to the arrogant and blinkered Old South.

. . .

California is becoming a reactionary two-tier state of masters and serfs whose culture is as peculiar and out of step with the rest of the country as was the antebellum South’s. The California elite, wishing to keep the natural environment unchanged, opposes internal improvements and sues to stop pipelines, aqueducts, reservoirs, freeways, and affordable housing for the coastal poor.

California’s crumbling roads and bridges sometimes resemble those of the old rural South. The state’s public schools remain among the nation’s poorest. Private academies are booming for the offspring of the coastal privileged, just as they did among the plantation class of the South.

California, for all its braggadocio, cannot leave the U.S. or continue its states’-rights violations of federal law. It will eventually see that the new president is not its sickness, nor are secession and nullification its cures.

Instead, California is becoming a reactionary two-tier state of masters and serfs whose culture is as peculiar and out of step with the rest of the country as was the antebellum South’s. No wonder the state lashes out at the rest of the nation with threatened updated versions of the Old Confederacy’s secession and nullification.

But such reactionary Confederate obstructionism is still quite an irony given California’s self-righteous liberal preening.

There's much more at the link.  Recommended reading.

I think Mr. Hanson is right.  The current frothing-at-the-mouth hysteria in California over President Trump's policies reminds me of George Wallace's inaugural address as Governor of Alabama on January 14th, 1963.





  • Insistence on doing things as Alabama wants them?  Check.
  • Refusal to kowtow to federal authority?  Check.
  • Warning Washington that the next President would be determined by voters who shared Wallace's and Alabama's views?  Check.

Well, guess who won that fight?  (Hint:  see the outcome at Appomattox.  Wash, rinse, repeat.)

California might want to think about that . . .

Peter

10 comments:

C. S. P. Schofield said...

I see no irony whatsoever in comparing modern Liberal/Progressives to the Confederate leadership. Modern Progressives talk a great deal about caring about poor brown people. So did the Planters. Modern Progressive, their talk notwithstanding, pursue policies calculated to keep poor brown people poor, ignorant, and subservient. Modern Progressives believe that race is destiny.

Of course the real parallel is that Modern Progressives are a bunch of self-selected elitists who think they have a natural right to tell other people how to live. The Planters were another such. Self-selected elites are a recurring feature of human society. They sometimes start out improving matters, but they inevitably end up being parasitic. Differences between one elite and another are largely cosmetic, or accidents of history. They are much of a muchness. The history of human progress can be measured by the degree to which it was possible for the common man to tell the current elite to go climb a tree.

TheOtherSean said...

Another parallel: Democrats, all of them.

Kristophr said...

Northern California will be split off first ( State of Jefferson ).

Then SoCal gets crushed.

Anonymous said...

Mr, Hanson points out:

"Some California officials have talked of the state not remitting its legally obligated tax dollars to the federal government" and "They whine that their state gives far too much revenue to Washington and gets too little back."

Not much new there, in either instance. In the '80s a measure was introduced into the Colorado legislature calling for CO to retain the gasoline tax monies it collected and sent to D.C. because CO was sending dollars and getting pennies in return, and the state needed the money for road construction and repair. It never even got a vote in committee, but the idea of a huge, expensive, and distant federal government imposing its expensive will against a poor, defenseless state is not a new idea, at least not from the latter half of the 20th century.

California is, unfortunately for itself, large enough and sufficiently monied that it can operate its own huge, expensive and distant government imposing its expensive will from Sacramento.

We're hearing - mostly - from Coastal California, the 50-mile strip along the Pacific where the isolated Moonbat rich reside. Were succession to be considered a viable option, I'd think it would work best were Interstate 5 used to define the border; in fact, as one of them Rabble-Rousing South Carolinians (with Virginia lineage), I'd actually support that measure. It would be fun to see how long it would take for reality to migrate west of the 5.

c w swanson said...

Two important divisions need to occur.

The Ninth Circuit needs to be split into three new circuits.

California could better be split into four, or even five separate states. More conventional is the split between coastal and interior California, but if that happens, the interior state should by rights retain the name "California," since its values, industries and cultures are more akin to those that made California great. The coastal state should be known not as Jefferson, but rather Alta Baja California, or upper lower California, in homage to the elites love of all things Mexican, or more properly, non American. Whaddaya think/

Post Alley Crackpot said...

Message to Supreme Commander of Armed Forces, California Republic:

Looking forward to your Unconditional Surrender at the Kern County Court House.

We will also have diplomatic envoys there to describe in detail the conditions of repatriation involving Californians who continue to occupy our lands, which you will also agree to as part of your Unconditional Surrender.

Regards,
Supreme Commander of Allied Forces
Republic of Texas & New Mexico
Rocky Mountain Confederacy
United Dakota Nations
Cascadian Republic

:-)

Tirno said...

I've had an idea that could work to America's distinct advantage with regard to California secession: Hollywood accounting, on a national scale.

So, be open, honest and even let the UN send observers to permit a vote on secession, on a Congressional-District-by-Congressional-District basis. Hurry, before they come to their limited senses. Two thirds majority to leave and they can go. And, fair is fair, those CDs leaving will take their fraction of the national debt with them, in proportion to last census population.

Obviously, the US Federal Government will be removing military assets from those areas. The value of such assets will be subtracted from their fraction of the debt.

But remember that enormous amounts of land and property are owned by the US federal government out west. And land is at a premium in California, as we all know. So it just so happens that whatever land they want to take with them is worth about the remainder of the national debt plus about 10%. Hollywood accounting.

So, some really aggressive financial disciple followed by a balanced budget amendment (with a clause that allows expenditure to exceed revenue only is every member of Congress is barred from future office, and the rest of the United States are in pretty good shape, financially speaking, until the People's Republic of Progressia collapses under its own Venezuela-style ineptitude and the survivors petition for re-admittance to the USA. Why doesn't the debt come back? Well, after they devalued their currency for the twentieth time, the exchange rate for PRP Clintons to US Dollars is expressed in exponential notation.

David Lang said...

you forgot to provide a provision for those of us who are a minority in california and disagree with these ideas to have our property purchased by the state so we can relocate out of state.

if we could just get LA county and the bay area to leave, the rest of the state would not be so bad.

Tirno said...

David,

Well, there I go with my unreasonable expectation that the new People's Republic of Progressia would respect your property rights and allow you to sell your property without interference, when, duh, that's not likely to happen. Not to mention that your property values will dive towards the desert floor.

Sure, why not, they're already going to absorb the whole US national debt. What's another million here, million there between people that know full well they're going to hyperinflate that debt into nothingness?

On the other hand, hopefully you're in a congressional district that doesn't secede. Good news for you: I'm pushing for an NFA waiver for all of you, assuming the whole thing doesn't get repealed now that a lot of dead weight is ejected from Congress. Bad news: you're gonna need it.

Tad said...

As noted in another blog some days ago, the national Democratic Party will never allow California to suceed and take their blue state electoral votes away from future Democratic presidential candidates. Alas!