These "Disunited States of America": Secessionist Movements in America

There's no question that the United States is a deeply divided nation. It seems that we're split along practically every measure one can think of, from politics to race and ethnic identity to social, economic/class, and  regionalism. Several studies point out that we as Americans haven't been this deeply or broadly divided since the 1850's, the decade just preceding the Civil War, which, after 157 years, remains our nation's bloodiest conflict.

While the numbers vary, depending on the study, most estimates put the death total at around 620,000. That's more than the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-America War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined!

The causes resulting in the Civil War were varied. Certainly the issue of slavery was part of it, but it was by no means the sole cause. Other issues such as tariffs, state's rights and sovereignty, taxation, the admission of new states as "free" or "slaveholding", and so on were just as important.

One of the principal issues of the Civil War was over the right of succession with the many of the states (and not just Southern ones) supporting the idea that states voluntarily joined the union, and with the consent of its citizens, had the same right to voluntarily leave. 

However, many Northern (and some Southern) leaders opposed the notion of succession, holding that joining the union was essentially a one way street. This was particularly true with many business leaders on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line who had a vested interested in maintaining the union's integrity.

The highly industrialized North also had a far larger population base to draw on compared to the more sparsely populated agrarian South. As a result, it was this combination of industrial might and population which ultimately prevailed at Appomattox  in April of 1865.

Today, the United States is facing a similar dilemma. The majority of American citizens are sick and tired of being sick and tired of a corrupt and dysfunctional federal government which, like a plague, is affecting state and local governments.

Approval ratings for not just Congress and Presidency have been dismal for decades. However, the approval ratings for America's top ten institutions---the pillars of the nation---are just a bad. Even the judicial system, including the Supreme Court, are viewed as part of the problem.

The only key institutions which still has any semblance of popular support among the people is law enforcement and the U.S. military, although that support does not extend to the Pentagon which viewed as part of the government.

Part of the reason for the distrust of the government, which includes the Democratic and Republican parties, is the fact the overwhelming majority of Americans believe they are no longer represented (a belief which is supported by varying surveys). We can't even trust that our own votes are being counted!

Historically the United Nations sent observers to various third tier countries to ensure that elections were properly held; where women and others (mostly minority religious or ethnic groups) would be allowed to vote. Those observers would ensure that all the votes cast were valid and properly counted.

Ever since the election of 2000 and the matter of "dangling chads", we've continued to have charges of improper elections. Are we looking at the prospect of the United Nations sending observers to the United States to do the same thing?

America, as most citizens know by now, is no longer a democratic Republic. We've become a neo-fascist Corporatocracy; a surveillance state controlled by a super wealthy elite commonly referred to as an oligarchy or a kleptocracy.  For them, it's all about control, be it of assets, resources, or even us.

Corporate lobbyists write legislation that corporate funded politicians vote on. Corporations financially underwrite both political parties, which ensure that Independents and third party candidates are essentially barred from participating. They control the media which influences everything we hear, see, or read. They even determine our distractions, which often include subtle (and not so subtle) political messages embedded in them.

Is it any wonder Americans are looking to break free from this broken hamster wheel? One way is succession. Polls show an average of 37% of Americans would like to see their state secede. In some regions it's as high as 60%!  In this article we will look at a few of the movements looking to break out of this dystopian zoo and start anew. We'll start with state oriented groups first and then look at other breakaway groups.

First is the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) which advocates for self sovereignty. Like the Libertarian and Constitutional parties which are popular in Alaska, the AIP supports gun rights, home schooling, the privatization or deregulation of some public institutions such as utilities or prison management, and a government of limited scope.

As an aside, Alaskans pay no state income tax thanks to revenue generated from the production and sale of oil and gas. Residents also get a annual check from the state based on a percentage of the profits generated by the sale of Alaskan oil and gas. The AIP has been around since 1984, and while it has no elected representatives, has shown a sustained growth in membership.

California has two separatist groups, the California National Party (CNP) and the California Freedom Coalition (CFC). The CNP, founded in 2017, is based on what it calls "California nationalism", social democracy, and environmentalism. It considers itself to be center left, progressive and "big tent". Like the AIP, it has no elected members.

The CFC was created in 2017, and has been the more successful of the two California parties. The CFC is merger of the California Freedom Coalition Education Fund and the California Freedom Coalition Advocacy Fund. It also maintains a think tanks which focuses on issues relevant to the state such as federal overreach, illegal immigration, and taxes.

The Aloha Aina Party is one of the stronger secessionist groups. It promotes the restoration of the Kingdom of Hawaii or creation of a Hawaiian Republic. It came into existence in 2015 with the intent in restoring Hawaii's independence and promoting Hawaiian native culture, religion, traditions, and language.  In 2020 its state candidates received as much as 20% of the vote. Thus far none of their candidates have been elected to office.

The Texas Nationalist Movement is all about restoring the Republic of Texas as permitted in the state constitution (Texas was an independent nation for nine years before joining the union in 1845). In 2020, the Texas Republican Party included a plank in its platform which stated that the state had the right to ignore any laws which infringed on the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and reserved the right to succeed from the union. The plank passed with a 93% approval rate.

In June 2022, a plank calling on the Texas legislature to approve a referendum on whether the state should succeed from the union on a 2023 ballot was passed. However, as of the latest poll taken in 2016, support for succession declined with just 26% in favor. 59% opposed and 15% were undecided.

Vermont and New Hampshire both have active secessionist movements. Vermont, which had previously been an independent republic, is represented by the Second Vermont Republic while New Hampshire has the Free State Project (FSP).  

The Second Vermont Republic was formed in 2003 as a "non-violent" citizen network and advocacy movement calling for the full restoration of the formerly independent Republic of Vermont along with the end of "corporate and federal tyranny" over the state.

New Hampshire's Free State Project is one of the more interesting separatist movements.  Like Vermont, New Hampshire has a large number of politically independent voters. However, the FSP is pushing to recruit libertarians to the state in order to create a state based on libertarian ideals.

The aim is get a minimum of 20,000 libertarians to move to the state. As of February 2016, the goal was meet with  20,000+ individuals having signed letters of intent to relocate. By May 2022, about 6200 had moved to the state. In addition, unlike the other separatist movements, 17 Free State members have been elected to the state's 400 member legislature. The Free State Project was created in 2001.

Lastly is the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Efforts to make Puerto Rico the 51st state have been going on for decades now. Each time their attempts come up short. It seems that Puerto Ricans want to go the other way. In fact, it has one political party, the Puerto Rican Independence Party, three advocacy groups, and two military organizations pushing for a independent Puerto Rico. Efforts to break free of the United States has been ongoing since 1904.

Non-state organizations seeking to create separate entities within the U.S. are numerous. Most tend to be racial or cultural.  The Republic of Lakota is one such group. It's comprised of Native Americans activists who want to create a completely separate indigenous nation within the U.S. At one point, the organization was headed by the leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Currently there are 566 federally acknowledged Native American tribes and 355 official reservations scattered throughout the United States which already function as semi-anonymous nations.

Aztlan is a Chicano (Mexican-American) based movement seeking to reclaim a mythical land it believes was once owned by Chicanos. Roughly, the area encompasses the central and southern Western states including Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Southern California, and Texas.

The movement is supported by a well funded political organization named "UnidosUS" (aka "La Raza" meaning "The Race") which was founded in 1968 and has chapters in five major cities, as well as four Hispanic and Chicano advocacy groups as well as a paramilitary group known as "The Brown Berets". UnidosUS has a budget of approximately $59,307,000 along with an endowment of $142,261,521.

The Republic of New Africa, founded in 1968, is a black nationalist group which claims Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina as the new independent homeland of all black Americans. The idea of a separate black nation, which is viewed as racist, is supported by the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panthers. 

There is also the League of South (LS) which calls for the creation of a independent nation comprised largely (but not exclusively) of former Confederate states which it calls the "Southern United States". Although typically referred to as being "white nationalist" and "racist",  what is proposed would be non-racial, conservative, and Christian. The League of the South was formed in 1994.

In addition to these secessionist or political independence movements, there are several others such as the bioregional Cascadia, which includes Oregon, Washington, and the Canadian province of British Columbia, was originally proposed in 1843. The more recent Northwest Territorial Imperative seeks to create an exclusive all white European "ethnostate", also in the northwestern portion of the U.S..   

Just as every empire broke into numerous independent nations, which in turn merged and morphed over time into new countries, there's little doubt that a similar fate will befall America. Many of the divisions already exist and the foundations are starting to form. Politically correctness, reverse racism, and cancel culture with its intolerance to free speech, while popular in the short term, will only hasten the eventual creation of a new "Disunited States of America".

 If you want to know more, please take a look at the links below. If you enjoyed the article, please consider passing it along to others and don't forget to subscribe. It's free! Lastly please be sure to "like" us on whatever platform you use to read anotheropinionblog.com. It helps with the algorithms and keeps our articles in circulation. Thank you! 

 

New Poll Reveals Percentages of Americans Who Want to Secedeby Region

Shocking poll finds many Americans now want to secede fromthe United States

List of active separatist movements in North America

Aztlan, The Mythical Homeland of the Aztec-Mexica

UnidosUS

Are US Black separatists groups on the rise?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biden's "New World Order"

President Joe Biden recently spoke to the U.S. Business Roundtable, powerful non-profit lobbyist association, and made a rather interesting comment. He said "Now is a time when things are shifting. We’re going to — there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it".  So, what are we to make of that?  

The first thing we should to note is the near silence by the corporate media to the comment. When President George H.W. Bush, speaking of the situation in the Persian Gulf, said "Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can emerge...", the media pounced on it. Political talk shows were all over his remarks about a "new world order" and its projected meaning, and yet with Biden, the media's response is rather low key. Why is that, besides the obvious fact that Bush was a Republican and Biden is a Democrat?

President Bush's comment, made in 1991, was in regards to the growing situation with Iraq's invasion of the Kuwait (or more specifically, the takeover of Kuwaiti oil fields which impacted key oil companies with which Bush had close connections as a Texas oilman). He was speaking about an American led coalition of nations acting in unison in removing Iraqi President from Kuwait; the United States as the world's chief police officer and arbiter of all things sacred  just.

In this case with Biden, he was addressing some of the most powerful individuals in America, the presidents and CEO of the nation's largest corporations such as Ford, General Motors, Facebook, Amazon, Exxon, Twitter, and Alphabet, about  the current situation in the Ukraine.

He also went on to say that the world has reached a "inflection point" (which is a major change in direction) which only occurs every three or four generations. He added that it was up to the U.S. to determine the outcome of this global change and then lead it.

Unlike Bush's speech, in which the U.S. and its allies at the time had jointly used sanctions backed up with military operations, Biden was addressing the use of sanctions and the potential of NATO to contain Russia, which is, in itself, questionable given Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas.

If, going on Biden's comment, we look back roughly three or so generations back to what he says was the last great inflection point in humanity's history, we're looking at World War II. That war, which was in truth a continuation of the first world war, marked the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and Fascism, the Holocaust, the creation of Israel and expulsion of Palestinians,  the beginnings of the Cold War, and with it, the change of the world's economy.

Following the end of World War II, America's global role did change. It became the dominate world economy. It also became, albeit briefly, the world's sole "superpower".  It helped lead the way to the creation of the United Nations in June 1945, just two months after VE Day and two months before VJ in the Pacific. It orchestrated the creation of NATO in 1955 as the Cold War between the three Western Allies and Soviet Russia begun (the Warsaw Pact, was formed in 1955 as a response to NATO).

But perhaps more important,  this "inflection point" created a new economic order out of the ashes of war which called for global trade on a previously unheard of level, a breakup of trade restrictions, the creation of global reserve currency---the U.S. dollar, and the eventual end of the gold standard. The post WWII period was seen as the "Golden Age of Capitalism".

However, all that glitters isn't necessarily golden. The economic colonialism it created led to the rise of OPEC and the use of oil and gas as an economic weapon (resulting in the oil and gas crisis of 1973/74) along with the stock market crash and subsequent recession of 1973 through 1975 (the joke at the time was "if it's a recession in Washington DC then it's a depression in the rest of America").

We also saw America first exert its attempt to be the world's policeman; enforcing what it saw as right and wrong, which included overthrowing of legitimately elected governments (almost always "socialist") and the installation of brutal right wing militaristic juntas. Many times it also included the assassination or imprisonment of leaders and political opponents. But, as long as they were "business friendly", that was all that mattered. So, what was President Biden implying with his comment?

If Biden was implying that because of the recent quagmire Russia has found itself in or that somehow Russia will emerge as a weaker and less effective economically or militarily, he needs to reconsider his opinion. There's no question that Putin's invasion of the Ukraine was ill-conceived, even though his reasoning---to avoid encirclement---was understandable.

Russia has incurred the wrath of the world. It is facing historic economic sanctions, but sanctions alone aren't going to be effective. Russia has developed some strong trade relationships with other countries; particularly China, which now finds itself in a unique position. Both countries have a long history of being "frenemies", not altogether too different than the one it has with the United States.  If forced to choose between the West and Russia, China's economic interests lays to the West and Russia knows it.

Militarily, the Ukraine hasn't proven to be the "marshmallow" Putin's military advisers envisioned it to be.  We can see Putin's growing frustration and impatience through the increase in his use of more and more destructive weapons like hypersonic missiles or  "vacuum bombs".  We've also witnessed his advances breaking down thanks to stiff resistance of Kiev's military and the tenacity of its citizens.

This is, in quick order I suspect, going to put Putin at his own "inflection point" of either facing a protracted war similar to the one Russia fought in Afghanistan; escalating the war to a nuclear or biological level which would earn more than mere condemnation or sanctions and a likely reprisal by NATO and the U.S., or concluding a peace which excludes a NATO presence in the Ukraine and annexation of the Donbass. 

We would also be amiss not to mention President Biden's call for Putin to be charged as a "war criminal" and held accountable by the Hague for war crimes. As an aside, the Nuremberg Trials following WWII, was the first time a country's leaders were ever had personally responsible for the policies and orders given during the conflict.

Since then,  few leaders have been arrested or voluntarily turned themselves in to faced a trial. It's highly unlikely that Putin will be subject to either. First of all, it's very difficult to determine what a political leader ordered and how their subordinates interrupted those orders, especially under wartime conditions.

If the extermination camps had not been discovered, and (to be brutally honest), had the Jews living in U.S., the UK, and elsewhere, hadn't had the clout they did, it's unlikely that any of the Nazi leaders would have put on trial, let alone executed. Don't believe me?  Consider the Roma gypsies.

More Roma were murder (based on percentage of population) than Jews or any of the other groups in Nazi camps, and yet what compensation or recognition have they received? Did these homeless people receive land for a country? How many museums or monuments exist for them? 

As an aside, there's no question that Japanese, Hungarian, Romanian, and Italian war leaders were just as guilty as were some of Nazis, and yet virtually none were executed in the numbers that the Nazis were, nor the fact that the Allies were guilty of war crimes too, though not to the same extent.

Lastly, let's consider the notion of a "new world order" itself. The concept was intended to the creation of a more integrated world, ranging from stabilized trade, global justice, and manufacturing to issues like poverty, disease control, education, and environmental issues. Some would include the spread of democracy. 

In truth, the "new world order" is nothing more than an illusion. It requires a central authority that requires the suppression of national sovereignty. It assumes that the nations are lining up to become "democratic", when in truth democracy isn't for everyone, least of all American style democracy.

Did you know that of all the world's democracies, none---not one---has modeled itself on the United States? Instead, they've chosen the British parliamentarian style principally because it doesn't rig the system with two "winner take all" corporate owned parties, but allows everyone to have a voice with multiparty representation.

For that matter, America isn't a democratic as it thinks it is. In fact, it's ranked #25 according to the Heritage Foundation, putting it in the lower half of the "Mostly Free" section.  In addition, America is listed as a "flawed democracy", which is one step above a failed democracy.

Officially the U.S. is still called a Republic, but is in fact a Corporatocracy, which is a sort of neo-fascist merger between government and big business.  So, who is the "freest country in the world? Singapore, followed by Switzerland and Ireland. Surprised?

America has also forfeited its role as the world's policeman and arbiter of what it defines as "good" or "moral". The world doesn't want to become mirror images of the U.S.. Perhaps this type of leadership was needed following the chaos of WWII where a certain guidance was needed, but no more. Nations don't want a "big brother". They want fair trade and to be treated as equals. They want to develop and embrace their own culture, traditions, and values, and with it, their own economies without being dominated or manipulated by imperialistic corporations.

So, where does the leave President Biden and his "new world order"? Well, other than stroking the egos of a few dozen powerbrokers who together own both political parties, not much. American hegemony is on the decline. Using the threat of economic or military muscle to force of open markets or gain access to resources will not be effected going forward.

Capitalism must constantly consume and innovate to survive or else it dies. In addition, it faces a growing competition from China. Therefore, it must find ways to create equitable and long lasting partnerships to succeed such as investing in its partner's education, job training, and infrastructure. Relationships can no longer be disposable or one sided.   

At the same time, America must encourage other nations to become their own regional policemen and assume responsibility for their own security. America can no longer afford to pick up the tab. It needs to invest in its own education, technology, and infrastructure in order to remain competitive.

If there is a "new world order",  it will have to be one of regionalization coupled with fair trade. There is a time for expansion and then there is a time for internalization. Now is the time for the later.

If you want to know more, please take a look at the links below. If you enjoyed the article, please consider passing along to others and don't forget to subscribe. It's free! Lastly please be sure to "like" us on whatever platform you use to read A/O. It helps with the algorithms and keeps our articles in circulation.  

 

Biden says U.S. must lead 'new world order'

Bush 'Out Of These Troubled Times...A New World Order'

Lists of wars from 1946 to 1989

2022 Index of Economic Freedom