Secessionist No. 14

Seeing Red—and Seeing Blue

By Kirkpatrick Sale of the Middlebury Institute

*rehosted here with the express permission of Mr. Sale

It doesn’t take more than a moment’s reflection to realize that the United States is not.  United, that is.

            Not on any serious political, social, economic, or cultural issue that has come before us over the past several decades.  Not even on what issues are important, or on how to solve them, or on who should tackle them.

             Let’s look at them.  Immigration, border protection, guest workers.  English as the official language.  Iraq war/ withdrawal. War contracts and profiteering. Defense posture.  Imperialism, foreign bases worldwide. War on terror. Torture and detention. Renditions. Habeus corpus. Government  collection of phone and email data. Wiretapping without warrant. Patriot Act. Independent judiciary. Government by secrecy. Federal legitimacy.Lawmaking by lobbyists. States’ rights. Tax cuts for the rich. Port security.

             Capital punishment. Death-row juveniles. Gun control.  Stem-cell research.  Right-to-die (Schiavo) plug-pulling. Assisted suicide. Evolution/creationism.  Homosexual rights.  Same-sex unions. Federal marriage amendment. AIDS research. Abortion. Condoms. Sexual abstinance as policy. Medical marijuana. Federal universal health care. Plan-B pills. Social Security. Medicare drug program. Balanced budget. Minimum wage.

            Religion/evangelicals. Armageddon/Rapture. Faith-based Federal funding. Patriotism. Flag-burning.  Environmental protection. Endangered species. Road-free wilderness. Extractive industries. Global  warming. Kyoto accords. Alternative energy.  Wind towers. Nuclear power. Avian flu. Scientific research.  Mileage fuel standards.  Control of auto and power-plant emissions. Peak oil. Oil diplomacy.

            United Nations.  Test-ban treaties. Geneva Convention.  International criminal court. NAFTA/globalization.  Free trade.  Europe. Dafur. Israeli occupation, settlements, and the wall.  Palestinian intifada. Iranian nuclear program. Afghan warlords, poppy trade. Chinese oppression. Trade deficits.

            And the right of states of the union to secede peaceably.

            I’ve probably left out one or two, but you get the idea. On all of the serious issues of our time, and some not so monumental, the divisions of opinion (and sometimes multiple divisions) are wide and deep and contentious.  They do not break down by party affiliation especially, or age, or gender, or wealth. There is some correlation with urban/rural, but not on all the issues. They break down mostly, as the last two elections have shown, by geography: the red states vs. the blue, the South, the Prairie, and the Rockies vs. New England, Middle Atlantic, the Great Lakes, and the West Coast.

            It’s not a perfect fit, of course, because presidential voters didn’t vote on all these issues, only on the candidates, and those mostly avoided taking stands or took roughly similar positions.  But let me look at the red-blue divisions on a number of key issues to show part of the general pattern.

            The first and most remarkable issue is slavery. Yes, and I mean pre-Civil War slavery.  All of the states that permitted slavery, and  the four western territories where it was not outlawed (Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, New Mexico), voted red in the 2004 election.  The states and territories where slavery was illegal (and blacks generally made unwelcome, or confined to towns like Indians to reservations), voted blue, with the exception of Ohio and Indiana, and the eastern part of the Washington and Oregon territories (which became Idaho). Can there be some lingering connection? 

It is certainly not that black populations voted red, for the large majority went Democratic, so is it possible that places that developed a resentment of the North and the free states in and after the Civil War still have a deep tradition, and culture, of hostility to the rest of the nation, the effete East and the Left Coast, and what they would think of as the quiche and chardonnay crowd?  And they  express it by voting against the party strongest in these Democratic strongholds, and the candidates from them, instead voting for Republicans who are strong in the South and the Prairie states.  In fact, you could argue that they have chosen to have native sons of this area become president, regardless of party, since 1977 (Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, mindful that Reagan was a transplanted Californian).

But perhaps we should touch on more recent contentious issues. Take abortion:  the states that have laws protecting this right are California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, and Washington, and the states where courts have recognized the right are Illinois and Oregon.  Almost all the states with the highest rates of abortion are blue, led by New York, Delaware, and Washington, and the red states have the lowest, with Utah, Idaho, and Colorado ranked last.

Or gay marriage/unions.  The only states that allow it are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts,  New Jersey, and Vermont with bills or court cases pending in New York and Rhode Island; all the other states but New Mexico have prohibitions against it, including the blue states of the Great Lakes.

Stem-cell research.  The only states with laws or money supporting this are California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, with Missouri considering a proposal for it.

Power-plant emissions. States that have sued the Federal Environmental Protection Agency to raise standards on CO2 pollutants are Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Fuel efficiency.  Not coincidentally, the same states plus California and New Jersey have also sued the EPA for tougher mileage regulations on SUVs and trucks.  States that are planning to follow California’s tough new fuel standards for these vehicles are Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

And on it goes. The blue states really are different.  The same kinds of divisions hold true for countless other issues, ratified by poll after poll that have geographic breakdowns.  The blue states, for one thing, are richer than the red—the top five states in per capita income are Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York, the bottom five are Utah, New Mexico, West Virginia, Arkansas, and  Mississippi. Blue states pay far more to the Federal government than they get in return;  all the red states except Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas get more money than they put in, and in some cases (New Mexico, Alaska, West Virginia, Mississippi, North Dakota, Alabama, Virginia, and Missouri) more than $1.50 back for every dollar in taxes.

Blue state people marry later and have a lower divorce rate, where people in the South have a divorce rate 50 per cent over the national average.  Blue states have far more households with unmarried people, the most being in Maine, New Hampshire,  and Vermont, the least in Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Best of all, blue states produce 95 per cent of the quality wine, and drink more of it than anyone else.

           

            But what sense does all of this make—why should such a divided country stay together?  To whose advantage, except the Federal politicians and the bureaucrats, and maybe the corporations that benefit from the commerce clause and uniform regulations?  Is that enough?   Why on earth do people want to live under the same government with other people so dramatically different? Why do they want to keep fighting these battles?  And why, when one side’s preferences win out—as at present with the red states in power in Washington—should people suffer to live under laws and regulations and directives and  practices that enshrine values and beliefs that they detest?  Where is the moral, or philosophical, much less political, justification for such a system?  

            Isn’t it obvious that a dissolution of this system would be to the advantage of all? The evangelicals wouldn’t have to live with the godless, the pro-choice people wouldn’t have to keep fighting the pro-lifes, the families frightened by homosexuality wouldn’t have to worry about Will and Grace, the creationists could have their intelligent and other designs all to themselves without threat of Darwinists, the people who find the Iraq war not only illegal but inane wouldn’t have to send their sons and daughters,  the states that want to follow Kyoto protocols and establish wind farms and strictly oversee organic standards wouldn’t have to follow a government that doesn’t.

            I’m not saying that with dissolution there would no longer be disagreements,  for in no state is there probably unanimous agreement on any issue.  But it would allow for the settling of a great many disputatious questions, and obviously add to the sum total of happiness thereby.  Besides, once a state, or group of states (I’d think of New England for the blues, the Confederacy for the reds), did not have to worry about the other side and could go about running things as they saw fit, those who disagreed with these policies could up and leave, and those in other states who liked them could move in.

            It’s all so logical.  The wonder is that it isn’t happening right now across the land.

Kirkpatrick Sale - is the author of thirteen books, including Human Scale and Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (University of Georgia Press).  He is a founder and director of The Middlebury Institute for “the study of separatism, secession, and self-determination.” Author of Secessionist Paper No. 12, 13, 14 and 15.

The Calhoun Institute