Secession Rising?, Revisited - Pat Buchanan Surveys the Scene at Home and Abroad

The evidence continues to mount that the world’s countries have grown to an inhuman size.  But perhaps the tide is turning.

Abroad, Mr Buchanan lists these peoples as actively trying to affect a separation:

Scotland is moving toward a referendum on independence from England, three centuries after the Acts of Union. Catalonia pushes to be free of Madrid. Milanese and Venetians see themselves as a European people apart from Sicilians, Neapolitans and Romans.

Dutch-speaking Flanders wants to cut loose of French-speaking Wallonia in Belgium. Francophone Quebec, with immigrants from Asia and the Third World tilting the balance in favor of union, appears to have lost its historic moment to secede from Canada.

Among the Corporate States of America, he speaks about the secession movements in Northern California, Northern Colorado, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Vermont, and Western Maryland.  Of the last of these, Mr Buchanan writes,

While many Red State Americans are moving away from Blue State America, seeking kindred souls among whom to live, those who love where they live but not those who rule them are seeking to secede.

The five counties of Western Maryland — Garrett, Allegheny, Washington, Frederick and Carroll, which have more in common with West Virginia and wish to be rid of Baltimore and free of Annapolis, are talking secession.

The issues driving secession in Maryland are gun control, high taxes, energy policy, homosexual marriage and immigration.

Scott Strzelczyk, who lives in the town of Windsor in Carroll County and leads the Western Maryland Initiative, argues: “If you have a long list of grievances, and it’s been going on for decades, and you can’t get it resolved, ultimately [secession] is what you have to do.”

And there is precedent.

Four of our 50 states — Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, West Virginia — were born out of other states.

Considering that he did not need to mention the more well-known secession movements elsewhere in the Empire - Alaska, Hawai’i, Texas, and the other Southern States in general - to fill out his article, this is a hopeful sign indeed.

Mr Buchanan's essay, ‘Is Red State America Seceding?’, is available here: 

http://buchanan.org/blog/red-state-america-seceding-5934