Imagining the Big Split

I thought Newsweek was defunct, but it appears to continue as a website. RealClearPolitics links to an article there which, though somewhat far-fetched, proposes a radical solution to our national division.

Imagine tossing all the U.S. states and Canadian provinces into a pile and sorting them out ideologically, that’s what author Mark Joseph imagines. Although it isn’t an analogy he makes, it resembles the relationship surrounding states had with Nevada until quite recently.

Historically, Nevada was a place you could go to gamble, get a quickie divorce, buy legal alcohol 24 hours a day, or patronize a legal brothel. Folks from CA, ID, UT, OR, AZ and beyond went there to “do what they damn pleased” without being told no or breaking the law.

Joseph proposes that sort of relationship between the United States of Canada and the United States of America. The former including the progressive states and provinces, the latter the conservative heartland of both former countries.

He imagines it would work like this.

The USA will quickly make most abortions illegal, the right to carry firearms absolute and marriage only available to a man and a woman, once again. Taxes will be drastically lowered and social services scaled back.

In the USC on the other hand, firearms will only be carried by police officers, government will stay out of all reproductive issues and all forms of marriage between consenting adults will be legalized. Tax policy will follow the vision laid out by Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders and the Green New Deal will become official national policy.

For those states who have second thoughts, an open door policy will allow any state to secede and join the USA or USC by a 2/3 majority vote of its legislature.

Citizens of both nations will be allowed to travel freely which means citizens of the USA will be able to travel to the USC to procure an abortion or take their favorite drug or engage in whatever activity they can't back home.

And people from USC would go hunting in and buy oil produced by the USA. It likely wouldn’t work, but it is fun to imagine. Those permeable borders would let too many illegal guns flow one direction, and too many illegal drugs the other.

Canadians do a bit of this now. We know of a RV campground in a state bordering Canada where they store handguns owned by Canadians who winter in the southern U.S. Said guns and ammo - verboten in Canada - get dropped off when headed home in spring, and picked up again when headed south in autumn. It’s a thing.