Which State Will Lead The Secession Movement, California, Colorado, Or Maryland?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – We now have three pockets across the amber waves of fuel, at least three that have been identified.  That does not include the continual or I should say long-suffering desires of the people of the northern part of the State of New York who would form the nation of Iroquois or whatever you would call it.  That does not include many of you people in Texas who wish you could dissolve your partnerships with Houston and Austin.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  You might be shocked to learn, Mr. Gruss, that your home state, the western part of Maryland has apparently had it with the eastern part of Maryland and Annapolis and desires to form their own state.  Have you seen this?

AG:  I did see that, yeah.

Mike:  I don’t suppose you’ll be moving to western Maryland anytime soon.

AG:  Will not be happening.

Mike:  It’s quite a commute from over there.  The Washington Post reports “Western Maryland secessionists seek to sever ties with the liberal Free State.”

[reading]

The push by 50 western Virginia counties to secede in 1863, forming West Virginia at the height of the Civil War, was led by a charismatic store-clerk-turned-lawyer who famously urged his supporters: “Cut the knot now! Cut it now! Apply the knife.”

West Virginia was the last state to break off from another. Now, 150 years later, a 49-year-old information technology consultant wants to apply the knife to Maryland’s five western counties. “The people are the sovereign,” says Scott Strzelczyk, leader of the fledgling Western Maryland Initiative, and the western sovereigns are fed up with Annapolis’s liberal majority, elected by the state’s other sovereigns.

“If you think you have a long list of grievances and it’s been going on for decades, and you can’t get it resolved, ultimately this is what you have to do,” says Strzelczyk, who lives in New Windsor, a historic town of 1,400 people in Carroll County. “Otherwise you are trapped.” [Mike: I assume Carroll County is named after the great founding father Charles Carroll of Carrolton.]

Strzelczyk’s effort is one of several across the country to separate significant portions of states from, as he puts it, “the dominant ruling class.”

[end reading]

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Mike:  I don’t know if you’ve seen this.  There’s another story from yesterday that a series of counties in northern California now have voted or wish to vote to break away from the rest of the California.  Anyone that just objectively looks at the State of California and at the massiveness of the landmass that it is and the diversity of the citizenry in the different regions has to conclude that breaking California up, if citizens in those regions desire to do it, would produce more safety and happiness and liberty for the self-governing people therein than staying together as one.  This is what is being proposed here on a much smaller scale.  I don’t see why the size of the endeavor should matter, and what ought to matter to you, is the republican inclinations of people.  Apparently citizens of these United States cannot permanently be dissuaded from seeking their own forms of government if they believe that the one they are currently suffering under is making them suffer.  That’s what’s really in play here.  Just like in the California story, “Siskiyou supervisors support withdrawal from California.”

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So we had the story of northern Colorado.  Now we have western Maryland and northern California.  We now have three pockets across the amber waves of fuel, at least three that have been identified.  That does not include the continual or I should say long-suffering desires of the people of the northern part of the State of New York who would form the nation of Iroquois or whatever you would call it.  That does not include many of you people in Texas who wish you could dissolve your partnerships with Houston and Austin.  That does not include people in Georgia that wish to leave the stranglehold that the City of Atlanta is trying to exert on the northern counties that surround Atlanta.  We covered the story three or four months ago.  They’re seeking to exert it because they need funding for their school system.  With people running as far and fast away as they can from the undeniably corrupt Atlanta school system and trying to form their own, the people in that area of Atlanta are saying: No, no, you can’t leave.  You’re under a court order.  You gotta stay and you gotta fund our corruption here.  We don’t have anybody else to pay for it.  This is a growing thing out there.

What is really encouraging about it is the abandon that some of these people are pursuing things with.  Look, the people are sovereign.  You can’t make us live in the western part of Maryland and abide by the despicable, heinous actions of eastern Maryland anymore and you shouldn’t be able to make me.  Of course, people in the eastern part of Maryland are going to say: We own western Maryland and we’re all in this together.  Unless you’re going to buy your way out of this, then you’re not allowed to leave.  I would say the counter argument to that is we’ve all been paying taxes for all the improvements in all of Maryland for all of these years.  We decide when we are leaving you in eastern Maryland with as big a chunk of our change that you have squandered as you are leaving us here.

[reading]

Historians, political scientists and the leaders of the movements say secession efforts are being fueled by irreconcilable differences on issues such as gun control, taxes, energy policy, gay marriage and immigration — all subjects of recent legislative efforts at state and federal levels. The notion of compromise is a non-starter. With secessionists, the term “final straw” comes up a lot. [Mike: The term republican ought to come up a lot, or republicanism.]

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“You don’t have to be a student of the details to know that people are just disgusted with what goes on these days,” says Kit Wellman, a political philosopher who studies secession at Washington University in St. Louis. “These people figure they are better off on their own if they could just be with like-minded folks.”

Secession is a difficult political fight to win. The U.S. Constitution allows regions to separate only with the approval of the state legislature and Congress . . .

[end reading]

Mike:  Every time this comes up, the writers at the Washington Post and other major news outlets just assume that those who are going to secede or break off and form their own states are going to ask for admission or apply for admission into the union of states, a process that has to occur but nowhere does it say is mandatory.  How do you know western Maryland wants to join or rejoin the union?  If they’re going to do this and they have any sense, the thing to do would be to actually pull off the separation, as the Declaration of Independence called it, and not apply to become part of the union.  [mocking] “But Mike, they’d be landlocked.  They’d be cut off from the rest of the free world.”  Well, that would give the surrounding states and Congress to actually do some domestic free trade agreements.  We might actually have to pay attention to some of the problems and issues and items that we have here at home and stop worrying about Syria, Yemen, and the rest of them.

Back to the story.  They retell the story of how in northern California, it was desired to form the state of Jefferson.  That’s what this other story is all about.  We go from Maryland all the way over to northern California.

[reading]

The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday to support the county’s split from the state of California.

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It’s the first in a long series of steps to form the proposed state of Jefferson, which proponents of the effort say would bring representation to rural North State counties that currently are beholden to the whims of representatives of the more heavily populated Southern California and free them from burdensome state regulations.

”We have to have government that’s local, understands our issues and has empathy” for those affected, said Mark Baird, a Scott Valley rancher who’s also president for Scott Valley Protect Our Water and vice president of the Siskiyou Water User’s Association.

Baird is leading the charge to form a new state from rural counties in Northern California and Southern Oregon, though he certainly wasn’t the only voice in support of the move.

More than 100 people packed the supervisors’ chambers Tuesday for the discussion on whether the county should issue a declaration that it wants to secede from the state. Nearly all those in attendance appeared to be for the move and about a dozen spoke in support of it.

”Many proposed laws are unconstitutional and deny us our God-given rights,” said Gabe Garrison of Happy Camp. “We need our own state so we can make laws that fit our way of life.”

[end reading]

Mike:  Brother, that’s what it’s all about.  Again, what exactly is wrong with that statement?  I’m still waiting to hear from someone from the Southern Poverty Law Center or somewhere like that who thinks that every time someone wants to form their own new state or secede from the current state they’re in, that it has to have something to do with plantations and reigniting the slave trade, which is as offensive as anything you could ever say about this.  These people in western Maryland, northern Colorado, northern California have legitimate gripes and beefs.  Because their state, the size — you might not say Maryland is out of scale but certainly California is.  Because of the size and scale of the endeavor, they cannot, because of the way the state is carved up and the way it is represented, they cannot practice the art of self-government, which was the art that was practiced for a couple hundred years on the continent of North America, chiefly in the provinces or states known as the United States.  Of course, we ended all that in 1865 as the rush to consolidation and nationalization finally took over.  The tendency toward being republican and being more limited in the scope and size of the governments was put on the proverbial backburner forever.  The 17^th Amendment to the Constitution sealed that deal once and for all.

Think of it like this.  Let’s just say that northern California forms Jefferson, northern Colorado forms Nocol or whatever you want to call it, and western Maryland is successful and these are new states.  Let’s say they go through the rigmarole and actually apply for and are granted acceptance into the union, which would make 53 states instead of 50.  The State of Maryland still exists.  It hasn’t been broken up.  Its judiciary will not cease to function.  Its government will still meet where it meets today.  Ditto that for Colorado and California. Where exactly is the problem?  Think about the benefits for those that have just recently broken off and formed their own new states.  Northern California, which would then become Jefferson, combined with southern Oregon, would then be able to elect their own pair of United States senators if they chose to join the union.  So you don’t have to live under the auspices of Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer as your senators any longer.  Just seeing as how that is a very agricultural and rural area, you might actually have some ranchers and agrarians in that area that understand what it’s like to live in northern California, the problems associated with it with the water and the climate and what have you, and what must be done to adjudicate or help you out. Ditto that for northern Colorado.  You get your own pair of United States senators, and your own member of the House of Representin’ or two, and ditto that for western Maryland.  Again, all you’ve done is dilute the power.  You get your own governor, too.  Or if you’re smart, you get your own president.  If you don’t join the union and just become the Republic of Jefferson, you’re then electing the first president of the Republic of Jefferson.

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It is encouraging to see these efforts continue and these brave souls of citizens daring to attend these meetings and vote in the affirmative, and daring to challenge the status quo that says [mocking] “If you say secession, that means you’re a racist.  That means you want a plantation, doesn’t it?”  No, it doesn’t.  It means you desire the ancient art and practice of governing yourself.  It used to be called republicanism around here.  Maybe someday we can bring parts of it back.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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