The issue of California secession isn’t going away.
Last week, the California secretary of state approved a new ballot measure on secession for the signature gathering phase of the initiative process. If activists are able to collect enough signatures by late July, voters in 2028 will be able to vote yes or no to the question “Should California leave the United States and become a free and independent country?”
A majority vote for this measure wouldn’t sever ties with the United States government, of course. It would merely create a commission to study the option of political independence.
Even if the measure managed to get a majority vote, it would do little, legally speaking. On the other hand, it certainly would continue a political and ideological process that is a necessary—albeit insufficient—condition for eventual separation.
The issue of redrawing California’s borders has arisen repeatedly over the past twenty years., Whether we’re talking the “Six Californias” attempt to break the state up into smaller pieces, or the 2017 “Calexit” campaign, talk of radical change to California’s status quo isn’t going away. This repetition of calls for change is essential to laying the ground work for eventual secession. Each new campaign in itself has few implications for the short term, but in longer term, pushing the option over and over does make secession more likely. After all, as we’ve seen in the dozens of successful cases of secession since 1945, an important first step is thinking in terms of separateness and independence.
California Secession Would Be Great for “Rump America”
Unfortunately, we are only at the beginning of a long process, but most of us who presently reside in the tax farm called “the United States” would be much better off if California were to secede as soon as possible.
Now, I know that many of my readers are not big fans of California—or at least the politicians elected by the people there—and are not inclined to cheer on the state’s political activists. Nonetheless, for those of us who actually want to improve prospects for greater freedom and less state power in North America, we ought to wholeheartedly support secession for California.
The immediate benefits should be clear. In a recent article on Trump’s call for annexing Canada, I noted that adding Canada to the US would be like adding a second California. Such an annexation would greatly shift American political ideology to the left and import millions of new voters who favor policies like government-controlled healthcare and draconian gun-control measures.
California secession would work in the opposite direction. By placing California outside the borders of the United States, the US would free itself from millions of voters who, like Canadians, generally favor high taxation, runaway government spending, stringent gun control, and harsh government regulations of nearly every kind. American politics would shift much more in favor of free markets, relative fiscal restraint, and public safety. California’s 52 members of the House of Representatives would be eliminated from the US Congress, as would be the state’s two senators. Most of these, of course, are dedicated social democrats of the Kamala Harris variety. The political and ideological status quo among America’s elected officials would be transformed overnight.
This would by no means change the US into a laissez-faire paradise, but the positive change would be immense.
Moreover, California residents would cease to be US citizens, and thus would no longer be eligible to vote in US elections. No longer would residents of nearby regions like Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and Texas have to suffer waves of Californian migrants who are free to recreate the disastrous political realities of California in new locations.
The damage done by these migrant Californians is magnified by the fact that, so long as California is part of the United States, a Californian’s citizenship seamlessly transfers to the new state. That is, Californian migrants are able to almost immediately participate in the political system in their adopted homes—to the disadvantage of longtime residents. After California secedes, this unfortunate situation would come to an end, and Californians would become foreign nationals when living in the “Old United States.” No longer would the corporatist Silicon Valley “elites”—most of whom are dedicated servants of the surveillance state—and the retired civil “servants” of California, living on fat pensions, be able to so easily hijack the political institutions of non-Californians.
Nor would these foreign nationals from California be eligible for the welfare state of Rump America. After all, without California policymakers present to block every attempt at reforming the US’s broken system of naturalization, Americans would be free to ensure that foreign nationals no longer receive free money from the taxpayers. Rather, only migrants who are able to support themselves would find it feasible to relocate to the Old United States.
This isn’t to say that no one from California would be welcome. Without the opportunity to live on the dole, and without immediate access to the benefits of citizenship, it is likely only the most motivated and industrious Californians would seek to emigrate to Rump America. The minority of Californians who actually value freedom and fiscal sanity, and who are capable of leaving other people alone, should be welcomed with open arms in Rump America.
Secession Is the Future
Admittedly, this is all unlikely to happen in the short term. A response one often hears from those who reflexively defend the status quo is “it will never happen.” But in the world of politics, “never” is an absurdly long time. One can consult any political map of the world as it was 100 years ago to see just how non-permanent political institutions are. Rather, political disintegration of the United States is inevitable. It happens to every large state eventually, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s as only one recent example. In the late 1980s, most of these prophets of what will “never happen” also told us that the USSR would last for many generations more.
The United States is already well down this road. Culturally, the US is heavily splintered and divided. The average resident of, say, Massachusetts or New York views the average resident of Texas or Alabama with contempt and fear. Similar feelings likely run in the opposite direction. Donald Trump, being hailed as having won a “landslide” victory, couldn’t even eke out more than 50 percent of the vote. 48 percent of American voters liked Kamala Harris enough to actually cast a ballot for her. This is not a country that is united in any sense of the word.
Rather, the United States is today held together only by an intricate system of federal patronage. The federal government, using taxpayer money, essentially pays people to make sure they remain attached to, and dependent on, the central government. For example, the federal welfare state has been fabulously successful at making a large portion of the population hooked on the government’s social benefits. As we saw in the failed secession vote in Scotland in 2014, pensioners will reliably support the central government so long as it continues to dole out cash to these elderly wards of the state. American recipients of Social Security are no different. Few of these will support secession if it disrupts access to their precious government checks. Meanwhile, an enormous system of farm subsidies, military spending, federal contracts, and NGOS ensures that millions of Americans owe their livelihoods to the central governments. Movements toward secession threaten to disrupt these gravy trains.
On the other hand, disintegration will come when the patronage system begins to falter. As the US rushes toward a federal debt of forty trillion dollars—soon to be followed by fifty trillion—the US government will find it harder and hard to balance its growing debt payments with the usual “generosity” of the state. Americans will then have to look to other institutions for their livelihoods, their pensions, and their “free stuff.” That is when secession starts to become a far more attractive option. After all, why stay attached to a political system that takes so much, and offers so little in return?
Until then, the best we can do is agitate for disunion, independence, and an orderly dismantling of the American leviathan state. It’s good preparation for the inevitable future.
