Split the Union!

Peaceful coexistence with conservatives is not possible.

As long as social conservatives get to write a single law, sexual and religious minorities and countercultural lifestyles will be persecuted, and the rich will get sweet deals at the American worker's expense. The only sane thing to do is to split the Union and let the fundies go their separate way. The liberal side would get the entire West Coast, most of the East Coast, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Illinois, and perhaps Colorado if they cared to join.

The fundies can have their christian Iran on the rest of the territory.

What do you think?

We could get to enshrine almost absolute personal freedom and privacy protections on the new Union's constitution.

edited 1st Mar '11 5:12:05 AM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

So basically we can have a liberal paradise and a conservative paradise? I predict this situation, considering the wide valley between the social views of Americans, to be like an even more permissive, say, Netherlands, bordering a country with social views similar to a more socially-liberal Middle Eastern nation.

The issue I'm interested in is how much the economic policies would change if the country was controlled solely by the Democratic party base. Same with if it's the Republican party base.

Letting them control such power in an intellectual echo chamber would be a surefire recipe for armageddon, we're America's collective Shoulder Angels.

Eric,

I think this is an insane, stupid, short-sighted idea.

Kill all math nerds

Yes it is. No. And blood doesn't wash out easily. It is a hundred and fifty years and the scars of the civil war are still on the land.

Hate is the one constant of human existence. Any time you subdivide a group of people they will section each other out into groupings and start with the hating. We bring our own serpents into eden.

Letting folk who can't co-exist go their separate ways strikes me as a better antidote to "hate" than forcing them to mingle.

Enjoy the Inferno...

The problem is that the population of cities tend to be liberal, while rural areas tend to be conservative. You can't divide the nation by territories without producing millions of refugees in the process.

Except that they coexist perfectly well until someone brings up politics.

Kill all math nerds

A better idea would be finding out the actual demographics of Whereever, USA and deciding who gets where based on that.

Enjoy the Inferno...

A very interesting article that was published a ways back resectioned the US into cultural and geographically consistent states. I think the total was about 12 distinct identities in america.

Breaking the Union would be a tragically bad idea. One of the great successes of the american experiment is the instability of our system. We are like a man constantly unbalanced, running ever faster so that he does not fall. The constant flux of our social fabric and integration of new cultures and attitudes is the cornerstone of our ability to thrive. Traditionally all the greatest periods of innovation occur when two cultures meet one another and are inspired by one another. America is in a constant state of inspiration and upheaval.

People who want to break the union are short sighted at best.

Part of the problem I see with Divided States of America, is the fact that the last time that was tried, the different halves were at war with each other. It "makes sense" to have divided states if they are enemies, but if you expect the halves/divisions to trade with each other, be military allies, and to basically behave the same way toward each other as they did before, then I don't really see the point.

Despite differences (and there are a lot of them), for the most part, Americans of different political stripes ultimately have common values and loyalties.

Hodor

This is one of those ideas that looks good on paper but creates more problems than it solves. I've thought about it myself, but in a properly functioning system, progressives and conservatives need each other. You can't just get rid of all the <insert minority here> and expect to live happily ever after.

I said, "properly functioning system." Right now it isn't.

Under World. It rocks!

Eh, I'm pretty sure we all realize the if the United States was separated, the results would be disastrous. I think the idea behind the OP is what kind of countries they would be culturally and legally if such a split were to happen without the added negativity of what would happen to an economy of that size splitting.

edited 1st Mar '11 7:25:07 AM by Completion

Okay, so what concrete negatives do the naysayers here forsee in a pan-secessionist nation?

Enjoy the Inferno...

Extremists without any moderating faction would proceed to do something incredibly stupid and, at present, politically infeasible.

Eric,

Probably the conservatives would ban abortion on their territory and the liberals legalize drugs and lower the drinking age on theirs. That's the immediate thing.

There would be a surge of very pro-worker legislation in the liberal States and very pro-business legislation in the conservative States. Of course, if we basically gutted the Federal government, we could have that without actually breaking the Union.

As long as there are attempts to dictate social policy through the Federal Government, there will be bad blood among Americans.

edited 1st Mar '11 7:33:24 AM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

Or we could have both sides leave and leave us sane people alone.

"Moderates" are secretly ultra-liberals/conservatives but they won't admit it. =P

Jokes aside, but I've always had a hard time believing that a social-moderate actually exists. This may actually be a result of the false moderation I see in politics today, but on most issues pertaining to social issues, I've never seen anyone hold an 'inbetween' view.

Like same-sex marriage; most people are either completely for it, or they're completely against. Everyone views civil unions as just a step to marriage - the politicians passing it know it (and is probably their plan), and the politicians voting against it know it. The voters who say they are for civil unions but not marriage have, in my experience, either been conservatives trying to move along with the progressive values of the day, or a religious liberal trying to reconcile their religious views with their political views. In both cases, the end result will eventually be the acceptance of same-sex marriage with them because they both have already decided for themselves the actual matter behind the issue - whether same-sex relationships should be recognized by society.

The so-called moderation that comes with social views is really just a stepping stone to the actual goal - granting half of the rights until the issue no longer becomes politically toxic.

To be honest, the difference wouldn't be that much. Nearly all social issues that occur in modern American politics have all been "won" by liberals. With the exception of gun control, which was "won" by conservatives and of abortion, which will never be settled. The south, contrary to popular belief, isn't full of bigots who press their religion on others. For example, I live in a city of about 400,000 and there's more than four gay clubs and an entire gay district. The second or third largest city in the state has a gay mayor. North Carolina is run by Democrats, but even the companies that are within the public eye regularly involve themselves within events whose purpose is to expand gay rights - hell, a grocery store and a local news station sponsor a gay pride parade every year.

And this is North Carolina, the home of NASCAR, and a former Confederate state.

You can accurately guess a person's views on social issues, with exception to abortion, by just their age. The younger they are, the more likely they are be socially liberal. Generational age plays the largest part in the attitudes towards social issues.

Yes, they're more conservative than a person in the North, but the increase in the acceptance of my example, same-sex marriage, follows the same average as the Northern states.

tl;dr: There's not really a such thing as being socially-moderate. There are only two issues that I believe it is possible to be moderate - gun-control and drug legislation. Possibly abortion. And both are issues, besides the possible inclusion of abortion, that could also be considered legal issues rather than social. Economically-moderate, yes. Socially? No, because if you become moderate on an issue, you have at least partially accepted the argument from the liberals.

edited 1st Mar '11 8:09:06 AM by Completion

Who gets the nuclear arsenal?

^^Raleigh sucks.

I think the term "moderate" is just a bad name for someone who likes a bit of this from one side, a bit of that from the other. Who says one can't be strongly in favour of abortion and gun rights?

Enjoy the Inferno...

Emphasis mine. Social conservatism has nothing to do in principle with economic liberalism - you're using the American liberal/conservative labels, right?

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

That's why I listed those three as exceptions.

But on issues like segregation, or same-sex marriage, the problem is being addressed in exactly in the same way by moderates and liberals. The moderates have agreed with the liberals about the problem at the core of the issue. The only difference is whether to progressively change it or have it change all at once. Desegregating schools and the government first, then the private sector - it doesn't matter. What matters is that the problem is being addressed in the exact manner requested by the liberals. A person who agrees with civil unions but not marriages will most likely have his or her opinion on the issue change given enough time.

At the core, the moderates and liberals are the same on social issues. There's no "little bit of this, little bit of that" in relation to the majority of social issues. Because if there is, the core of the problem is not being addressed.

Maybe what I'm getting at is that since the majority of social issues pertain to equality, there is no place for moderation. You are either equal, or you are not.

To the poster mentioning resectioning of the US states, that was part of the reason I had made that thread wondering how the individual states would survive if left on their own. My ultimate point being that the states as drawn do not reflect social/cultural uniqueness nor are they viable on their own and so, to preserve or restore (depending on the point of view) the balance of power between the federal government and the states, I argue we should amalgamate based on geographic, socio-cultural, and economic considerations rather than a nice round number of stars for the flag...

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

I'll assume there's going to be two for the sake of arguement, but if we're splitting the US in two, splitting into 12 would not be much harder IMHO. I wil also ignore any economic havoc, wars, etc. the split might create.

<minor derail> In Isaac Asimov's Living Space future people discover they can travel to parallel universes and colonize the uninhabited earths.

I always thought it would be fun to imagine selling the alternate earths to factions, so people who want a [insert culture, ideology, or religion of choice here] planet could have one, and people who insist on fighting each other over territory can stay on the old earth. </minor derail>

My proposal for splitting peacefully:

• Each state (or maybe each county?) would take a vote as to which side they want to be on. You might have to trade territory to create a reasonable border.
• There would be a grace period where people could sell their property in one state and move to another without going through immigration.
• The two countries could split the national debt either by population (e.g., if one side got 40% of the population, they agree to take 40% of the debt) or by GDP.
• We could share the nukes as with the debt, or by having a military person from each side guard each device, or by the state the base the device is nominally assigned to. You could have a treaty where we agree not to target each other... As I said, I'm assuming no wars will result.

IMHO part of the reason the U.S. is as homogenous as it is is that we are one country, and the barriers to travel, communication, etc., are very low.

I suspect as some people who found themselves "on the wrong side" migrated to the side of their choice, the portion of liberals in the most conservative states would decrease and vice versa, so the states would become more extreme. On the liberal side, marijuana and cocaine might be legal, on the conservative side, moonshine might be legal, resulting in two very different drug cultures. On the liberal side, the social classes would start to shift towards being more heavily unionized, while on the conservative side, the social classes would shift towards being more capatolist. Gradually each side would become its own nation.

However, I could also see future generations deciding to reunify as Germany did.

edited 1st Mar '11 8:40:50 AM by FrodoGoofballCoTV