In the summer of 2015, a chimney sweep in Elgin, Oregon, redrew the map of the American West. \u201cImagine for a moment Idaho\u2019s western border stretching to the Pacific Ocean,\u201d Grant Darrow wrote in a letter to the editor of his local paper. Rural Oregon, he insisted, should break its ties with the urbanites of Portland and liberals of Salem, and join Idaho. \u201cThe political diversity in this state is becoming unpalatable,\u201d he argued. \u201cRural Oregonians in general and Eastern Oregonians in particular are growing increasingly dismayed by the manner in which Oregon\u2019s Legislature and Oregon\u2019s urban dwellers have marginalized their values, demonized their lifestyle, villainized their resource-based livelihoods, and classified them as second-class citizens at best.\u201d<\/p>
…<\/p>
In the half decade or so since Darrow\u2019s diatribe, a simple and outlandish idea, percolating in rural Oregon since the 1960s\u2014what if we were just Idaho?\u2014has grown into a grassroots secession movement. Last month, Harney County, in the high desert of eastern Oregon, became the state\u2019s eighth to pass a nonbinding ballot measure supporting Darrow\u2019s proposal. Move Oregon\u2019s Border signs now dot the region\u2019s empty highways, and Mike McCarter, a retired agricultural nurseryman and gun-club owner who runs a group pushing for the boundary reshuffle, travels the state in a bright-red trucker hat bearing the slogan. \u201cWe don\u2019t care to move, because we\u2019re tied to our land here,\u201d he told me recently. \u201cSo why not just allow us to be governed by another state?\u201d He mentioned a supporter so certain that her property will become part of Idaho that she already flies its state flag on her lawn. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be Idaho,\u201d she told him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The movement has passed in nearly every county in which it’s gone to the ballot. As the article points out, it seems unlikely the Idaho legislature will accept the new border (which would drive Idaho’s western border to the Pacific – much less Oregon’s California-lite legislature full of unicorn-chasing feebs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let’s see – urban lotus-eaters, out of touch with and imposing their dystopian vision on the rest of the state, from a riot-torn city full of people who love central planning? Sounds familiar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second option – getting serious about Federalism, checks and balances, and enumerated, divided power, again – would be hypothetically simpler. And, sometimes, I think it would lead just as quickly to mass secession, as Big Left decided to hit the exits<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This nation has two choices, if we’re to remain a nation (or, potentially, a viable society). One of them – by far the most radical and traumatic – is secession; from individual states, and maybe from the US itself. (And no – that wasn’t “settled in 1865” any more than it was settled in 1776. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,267,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-the-s-word","category-the-second-civil-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80417,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80416\/revisions\/80417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}