Today I was writing to an acquaintance of mine about the political situation in Maryland; since he's from my old hometown he's not really familiar with it. I was going through some of the legislative madness we've endured lately and made the comment that someday somebody here on the Eastern Shore is going to say "enough of this bullshit coming from Annapolis, we want out!" Hey, the paper in Toledo always wanted Toledo to annex itself to Michigan, why not?
So what would it be like if we on the Eastern Shore decided to go out on our own? I think we would likely be a "red" state. Or we could become part of a "greater Delaware" and probably flip that state around to a red state. I think the population of the Eastern Shore would wipe out the numerical advantage Wilmington's Democrats have on the lower part of the state of Delaware. Hey, I'd be all for no sales tax (Delaware is a state with none).
And other places that would secede? I could see the Central Valley of California saying goodbye to the coastal areas. I bet the panhandle of Florida would be happier without bowing to Tallahassee. And the GOP would certainly be happy since they would likely get all four new senators. It's the same principle where the Democrats would love statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
Now, secession is not unheard of. Besides the obvious result of the War Between the States (I do like the Southern name for it), the state of West Virginia was the last state east of the Mississippi because the western counties of Virginia weren't interested in leaving the Union. So they formed their own state and were added to the Union in 1863.
There are a couple other secession movements I have heard of. I think back in the 1960's there were black radical separatists who wanted to split off Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and form a black-ruled country called Gamal. They would leave the Atlantic corridor in Georgia for whites to get in and out of Florida but the rest would be for blacks.
More recently, there's a group out in the Southwest actively seeking to break that section of the country away and return it to Mexico. Of course, with all the illegal immigration out in that area it's almost de facto Mexican territory now.
I will place a little aside here to wonder why the places here on the Eastern Shore, hundreds of miles from the Mexican border, insist on having bilingual signage in places like Wal-Mart and even Spanish-language radio stations? Would it not be better for the immigrants (legal or not) to be immersed in English rather than have the crutch of the language of their homeland? After all, this is America and I'm not learning Spanish for their sake!
I guess where I'm leading all this is that life would be a lot better for all of us if the federal government would mind our Tenth Amendment rights. A lot of the madness that we have to deal with here is not necessarily the fault of those in Annapolis. They do claim their share, but we have a lot of bureaucrats in D.C. who have no task but to perpetuate their job. It's the same principle as the local agency that spends its last budget dollars on extra office supplies just to make sure they use up their fiscal allotment and ensure that they don't get a cut because they didn't spend the amount budgeted. This actually happened where my ex-wife worked.
As Reagan said (and I paraphrase) the government that works best is the government that's closest to the people.
