On Secession

Seattle's Mayor, Greg Nickels, put out the idea that Seattle should secede from the rest of Washington state on Thursday.

While I'm not from Seattle, and in fact have never even visited that fair city, I fully support his notion. I think several other states and municipalities should also take this idea seriously.

There are many areas of this country, like Seattle, that literally support an entire region and are dragged down by surrounding areas. NW Arkansas, for example, is a great community with a thriving economy and an excellent school system while Arkansas ranks next to the bottom on nearly every category you can think of. Take away the cities of Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville, Rogers and the surrounding area, and Arkansas would rank last in everything. If that region of Arkansas were its own state, it would rank in the top 10 in many categories. Having lived in that area for half my life, I have thought for years that the NW Arkansas area should remove itself from the rest of that state and become a state itself. If that happened, I would move back there tomorrow.

Same goes for entire states. Nearly all states have some fringe groups calling for independence. Among those, Texas and Vermont seem to be the most vocal and organized. Depending on whose numbers you look at, Texas would be the fourth or fifth largest economy on the planet if it were independent. Hardly a backwater.

This all brings me to my main point. Over the centuries, civilization started in small areas. Over time, these areas became city states and then nations and then empires. Empires collapse and the cycle starts all over again. We are seeing a resurgence in regional identity of late. While in the United States, we all call ourselves 'American', we also call ourselves Texan or Californian or Virginian or New Yorker. The framers of our nation thought that the states should stay very independent, but have a central governing body to unify them, not to subjugate them. Over the last 200 years, we have stopped thinking of ourselves as a group of states brought together by common self-interest but more of a homogeneous society where our regional identities are discouraged.

I've felt a change over the last five years, however. Perhaps this has been brought about by a dissatisfaction with the Bush administration or it may be that it is just an idea whose time has come, but I would be very surprised if there were still 50 states 20 years from now.

All it takes is one municipality to secede from a state or a state to secede from the Union. Then the dominoes will begin to fall. I see the people of this nation still defining themselves as 'American', but more in the way that the French or Germans think of themselves as European. We will be more like the European Union - a collection of nation-states, completely sovereign, yet held together by a common constitution and currency,

So I say to Mayor Nickels. go for it, man... I'm right behind you.