The thing is, it's not just residents of the Last Frontierwho favor breaking away from the Union.JR, Please post this. It was sent to me byKirkpatrick Sales of the Middlebury Institute.And, is pretty interesting in the fact thatthere are more than a few like mindedorganizations. All I want to see is Alaska getthe vote we were entitled to. I could approvewhatever the choice would bebecause it would be Alaska's choice,but we have a vote coming to us to decide it.
Lynette Opinion:
The American secessionist streak
In a recent poll, one in five agreed that states
have the right to peacefully secede from the Union.
By Christopher Ketcham September 10, 2008
Sarah Palin's secessionist sympathies sparked
minor hysteria last week. Her crime was hailing
with round praise the work of the cranky Alaskan
Independence Party,
which advocates a statewide plebiscite on the
secession of Alaska from the Union. "The fires
of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred
for the American government," the party's late
founder, gold miner Joe Vogler,
once said. "And I won't be buried under their
damn flag."
Palin's husband was a member of the AIP for
seven years, and Palin herself has courted the AIP
for more than a decade.
In an address to the party convention this spring,
wearing a ski parka and looking like she was about
to decamp into the back country, Palin told the
secessionists, "Keep up the good work."
Dexter Clark, the white-bearded vice chairman
of the AIP, recently explained the motivation
behind the "good work": "Through oppression,
greed, corruption, incompetence and folly, the [U.S. government] is forfeiting its moral authority."
The thing is, it's not just residents of the
Last Frontier who favor breaking away from
the Union. According to a Zogby poll conducted
in July, more than 20% of U.S. adults --
one in five, about the same number of American
Colonists who supported revolt against England
in 1775 -- agreed that "any state or region has
the right to peaceably secede from the United States and become an independent republic." Some 18%
"would support a secessionist effort in my state."
The motivation of these quiet revolutionaries?
As many as 44% of those polled agreed that
"the United States' system is broken and cannot
be fixed by traditional two-party politics
and elections." Put this in stark terms: In a
scientific, random sample poll of all Americans,
almost half considered the current political system
to be in terminal disorder. One-fifth would
countenance a dissolution of the bond. This is not
a hiccup of opinion. In an October 2006 poll
conducted by the Opinion Research Corp. and
broadcast on CNN, 71% of Americans agreed that
"our system of government is broken and
cannot be fixed."
No surprise that the disquiet finds a voice in
popular movements. In 2007, a small group
of delegates to the second North American secessionist convention -- the first was in
Burlington, Vt., in 2006 -- met in Chattanooga,
Tenn., to discuss how to foment the collapse and
destruction of the United States of America. They
came representing 11 rebel groups in 36 states,
under banners such as the Republic
of Cascadia (wedding Oregon and Washington),
Independent California (forging the world's
fifth-largest economy), the United Republic of
Texas (returning the Lone Star State
to its aloneness), the League of the South
(uniting the secession states of old Dixie) and the
Second Vermont Republic (separating the
Green Mountain State from the U.S.). The
dominant idea among the delegates was that
the U.S. experiment had failed; it had become
impractical, tragically ridiculous, its leaders and
institutions bought off, whored out, unaccountable
and unanswerable to the needs of citizens.
The United States would have to be reborn smaller
-- our loyalties realigned to the needs of localities --
if the American dream was to survive.
The convention presented,
in effect, a marriage of progressives,
paleo-conservatives
, libertarians, Christian separatists, Southern nationalists, all united
"to put an end to the American empire and
reestablish freedom and democracy on the
state and regional level," as organizer Kirkpatrick
Sale (Middlebury Institute) put it.
The delegates settled on a list of principles they
called the Chattanooga Declaration. "The deepest
questions of human liberty and government
facing our time go beyond right and left, and in
fact have made the old left-right split meaningless
and dead," the declaration read. "The privileges,
monopolies and powers that private corporations
have won from government threaten ... health,
prosperity and liberty,
and have already killed American self-government
by the people." The answer, it went on, was that
the American states "ought to be free and
self-governing.
" The Declaration of Independence 250 years earlier asked for a similar dedication
to self-governance: "[W]henever any form of
government becomes destructive ... " wrote
Thomas Jefferson, "it is the right of the people
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new government..
.. " It could be argued that secession is the primal American act, as old as
the concept of the states themselves.What else
did our founders accomplish in 1776 but secession
from the tyranny of England? In other words,
what the secessionists would argue is that although
they are anti-United States, they are most certainly
pro-American.
Secession worries the staid opinion gatekeepers
of the major media. Sarah Palin's "flirtation"
with the AIP should make us "uneasy," as
Rosa Brooks warned in these pages. Palin's
secessionist ties raise "serious questions," averred
the New York Times. A more honest assessment
is that the separatism of the Alaskan Independence
Party is not so weird or wacky -- or out of
keeping with what appears to be a sentiment
rooted in that loveliest of American predilections,
our crotchety contrarianism.
Christopher Ketcham contributes to GQ,
Vanity Fair, Harper's and many online
publications. He is writing a book on
American secessionism.
christopherketcham.
com
