A Red March to Fix The States

Savage isn't proposing violence, but an organized movement to change states in order to ensure the tyranny of the (dubious) majority.

edited 18th Dec '11 12:23:45 PM by DomaDoma

Put that way, it sounds a lot like similar movements I've heard in the past decade, such as the Free State Project, or the Free West Alliance.

Sure sounded like he was in his op.

Give me some quotes; I don't see anything of the kind.

In fact, I've considered the Free State Project myself. It helps that New Hampshire is already more inclined that way than not.

Switching the electoral system to popular vote instead of the electoral college would help.

Yep.

Using a swarm of left minded people to overwhelm the right. Savages usual rhetoric and it usually involves a plan with violence and forcing a new political system down the other sides throat prefrably at weapon point.

The plan looks and sounds a lot like some of the same posts he has made in the past just without overt mention of violence.

If he honestly intends to use a suddenly shifting demographic to create change that would be a different story.

If you want to use a sudden shift in demographics you need to give them a good reason to go to areas where they are not going to like the political climate.

edited 18th Dec '11 12:41:19 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Yeah, I doubt most people are so dedicated to their cause that they are willing to just pick up, abandon jobs, families, and homes, just so they can be one more vote in a Repub state. Kinda silly.

Ah, he's made violent statements before? That'd be different, then.

To Savage's credit, the really dedicated ones don't have much in the way of jobs. (Replace "jobs" with "Bay Area political publicity stunts".)

edited 18th Dec '11 12:53:42 PM by DomaDoma

Yeah, I don't think people move because of political ideologies. Not in enough numbers to make Savage's idea actually work. I mean, the sparsely populated areas that are conservative strongholds tend to be sparsely populated for a reason that doesn't have as much to do with politics as he might think.

I mean, say you can get a sufficient number of people to sign up for this. You then run into the practical issues; where are they going to live? How are they going to employ themselves if they can't find a place that needs their particular skills in this place? And, given how electoral colleges work, and the fact that you also have to vote out the politicians/get people you like running, how long and how effective could any of this actually be?

Well yeah the practicality of moving a large number of people into those areas is a big issue. Housing, work, various public services etc are a serious consideration. There are reasons people tend to live in or around cities. More comparative opportunities.

Threadhopping and I think Mandemo (post 2) made a good point. You need a way to encourage people to actually move into "foreign" states.

1) People living in certain areas live there for a reason. Lots of people settle in the coasts, rather than rural inland states with large land but barely any population, like Montana and the Dakotas. It's not so favorable to live in those inland states, so people don't do it. Living in a landlocked place is quite different.

2) Where they live, in turn, can influence how people think to some extent. There might be reasons tied directly with their living conditions of the respective locations. The obvious example is rural vs urban representation. Urban citizens think the rural dwellers shouldn't hog all the land and use that as an excuse for overrepresentation. But in rural dwellers' eyes, it's not their fault they got to be stuck in a place when everyone else is living elsewhere. They, the 10%, just wanted to escaped the cities, while 90% of the population decided not to. Now those 10% are drowned out by tyranny of majority.

Now it's not impossible; political migration has happened before.

edited 18th Dec '11 10:48:26 PM by abstractematics

Yeah, I don't know if Savage actually knows what he's asking for.

I mean let's say you have Georgia. Georgia has a very large metropolitan area so it's not like there's not white-collar jobs there. However, it also has a population of about 10 million people — this is one of the larger Southern states, unless you count Texas. If you flooded it with liberals, as you're proposing, you're increasing its population by 1/10. If most people are moving to Atlanta, well, Atlanta only has a population of 5 million. Georgia isn't going to have the infrastructure to support that. You would pretty much have to homestead there, and it would be a lot harder now because this time the people who live there actually have legal protection.

And this is not even considering the places these settlers left behind...

edited 19th Dec '11 8:12:12 AM by ohsointocats

This idea isn't going to work.

The Bleeding Kansas event is not exactly a good predictor of current migration. It was done in a time of expansionism, and the people who moved had a good expectation of being able to find land to farm for a living when they got there. Finding a job when you move today is an entirely different game.

Actually, Bleeding Kansas had two things going for it: the people involved were zealots and there weren't a lot of native voters there to begin with...

Well, that too. But the point is, you can't motivate people to move for quite the same reasons as you could back then.

I'm not quite sure why it is that a totally leftist society is seen as being better than what we currently have. What if people in, say, Kansas really do prefer the GOP?

Aren't you just swapping one perceived "Tyranny of the majority" for another?

I don't think much stuff in a mainstream to conservative lifestyle would be persecuted or criminalized...

If they can still work, go for a few beers at the bar, hunt'n'fish, go to church, date, write, publish and read their sort of publications, and they aren't much forced into anything... I don't think they'd get much oppressed if at all.

Now compare to when the cons have full power: They ban drugs, so we can't even smoke a spliff in the beach. They try to censor obscene speech. They try to prevent women from having abortions. They restrict consensual sexual activity: i.e, they try and make sure you can't even hire a hooker!!!

Sort of seems to me like you're either being purposely hyperbolic or willfully disingenuous to say that. I mean, drugs and prostitution are easily debatable topics, abortion is a debatable topic. None of these necessarily equals oppression unless you're a far-left leaning type - in which case I reassert my previous statement; that you're mistakenly assuming such a political viewpoint is the best viewpoint.

There are plenty of Republicans who don't agree with limitations of the issues you just mentioned, or are in favor of different degrees of governing legislation. You're also ignoring the fact that there are many Republican view points that hardly equal oppression.

To turn it around, isn't it a form of leftist oppression to advocate the removal of ALL Republicans regardless of whether or not the voters of a given state want such a thing?

Again, Kansas and Texas, et al are seem quite pleased with the GOP, or else they wouldn't consistently vote them into office. By flooding those states with Democrats in an effort to completely remove the Republican party aren't you eliminating their, and by extension *my*, right to vote for the person and viewpoints I agree with?

edited 21st Dec '11 7:20:01 AM by Shepherd

Oh, Savage Heathen, how predictable it is that you'd make a thread about methods to suborn democratic processes. This is not going anywhere productive.