Speaking of secession

[Taverner]

Thought Experiment Theater...

In the vein of a previous post that mused about Texas independence, if a state really wanted to have more control in their affairs, the global trend is not secession, but in lobbying for more autonomy.

I've kept an eye on the California "secessionist" movement, if you even want to call it that. Yes there is one, but it's pretty realistic that secession will not work, for many of the reasons explained here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=922913&mesg_id=922913

HOWEVER, one can look into recent history to our Northern Neighbor, Canada. They have the Bloc Quebecois movement and the First Nations Movements. In the 90's the Canadian Parliament got together with these groups and worked out a plan to give them more autonomy. As a result, Quebec is fairly autonomous from Canada. Sure, they share the same military, the same money and they try to share the same languages - but Quebec has the authority to take out loans, and in many cases their Provincial laws supersede the national ones.

Then let's look at Nunavut. It's an arctic region with a mostly first nations population. They are almost completely autonomous, with the exception of military and currency. The official language of Nunavut isn't even English or French - its the Inuit Language which has its own alphabet. For all prectical purposes, they have their own government - The Legislative Assembly of Nunavut which is a unicameral assembly who governs by consensus. One interesting note is that they have no political parties.

[DCKit]

1. Utopia wouldn't work here, for soooooo many reasons.

For one thing, the second things got good in one of our autonomous regions, everyone from Dumbfukistan would want to move there to take advantage of the economy, they they'd try to take control of the gubmint so they could legislate how everyone else is allowed to live.

Pretty much what happened to the U.S. over the past 30 years. Still, it's a nice thought.

[Taverner]

2. Not talking utopia, but the direction any reason based "secession" campaign should take

[DCKit]

3. My point still stands and history is on my side. nt

[Taverner]

4. Or is it? Case in point: Medical Marijuana

The people spoke and medical marijuana became legal. Technically, the Federal law can be followed to bust those nasty evil communist pot smokers. Even though the 10th amendment makes it clear (and this is where it gets tricky) that the state laws should supersede since the federal law violates the 10th Amendment in this case. However, the 10th Amendment is at best capriciously enforced (the baggers love it when it comes to abortion, but not when it concerns the devil's weed)

All that aside, an organization interested in promoting state autonomy would support Prop 215 as the law of the land. Another direction for Autonomy, and one which I am 100% behind, would be California as a Bilingual state, where both English and Spanish are the official languages. Give it a grandfather period, and start learning those verbos irregulares