He should be allowed to secede but that would be a bit silly as the surrounding jurisdiction would probably not be friendly to him. I’d advise against that.
Now you. The guy says he secedes. What do you do? Kick in his door or call the cops to do it? Pull a Waco?
And one of my links has a discussion of how quite a few elderly Navajos have poor command of English and have no written language, leading to difficulty when voting. It also says that the requirement to vote by mail had unintended consequences, like making it much harder for these individuals to vote.
I would not call this voter suppression, as it does not seem to be intentional, and there were efforts to reverse that unintended consequence. But now I’m sure Republicans in the county may have some new ideas on how to win elections… after all, they had no compunction about a county clerk forging a date on an application for a Native American to appear on the ballot, in an effort to keep that person out of the election.
I foresee problems with all political arrangements. My big thing is scale. I like to keep conflict on a small scale. Centralization results in large scale conflict.
In this case, the social conflict between these ethnic groups would decrease if they weren’t forced to jockey for domination over each other.
In my admittedly sheltered experience, it’s always been the city or county commission that decide where to build the new fire and/or ambulance station. Who do you think should decide these locations?
Exactly. Let the Navajo pick their own sheriff and DA and decide where they want their own ambulances to be stationed and what they want their tax rate to be. That would, overall, be a good thing, wouldn’t it?
And therefore should of course be allowed to split off and form a new polity. I wholeheartedly agree that the whites should be permitted to secede because they’re unhappy with the results of the elections.
I live in Atlanta, which is historically strongly Democratic – the last Republican mayor was elected in 1877 – and there are plenty of whites (and blacks and Hispanics as well) who vehemently disagree with the policies of the party that won the Presidential election in 2016. So I assume I can count on your support for my proposal for the city of Atlanta to secede from the rest of Georgia, which is strongly Republican (no Democrat currently holds any statewide post)? The rest of Georgia might be upset that we’re taking with us the $385.5 billion we contributed to Georgia’s $554 billion GDP, as well as the largest, and one of only two Level One trauma centers in the state, the 16 Fortune 500 companies headquartered here, and of course the world’s busiest airport, but hey, they voted for Trump and we voted for Clinton, so it’s obviously best we separate.
I’m thinking “Atlanta: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Republicans!” for the T-shirts and bumper stickers.
So an individual house should be allowed to unilaterally secede from just the county, or at the state and federal level too? I’m just trying to see how far down this rabbit hole goes.
I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole right now, sorry.
Governments have traditionally formed by conquest. Yes once you get the ball-rolling on conquering people, there are benefits to being able to conquer more people I guess.
You’re probably right. Then again, the Navajo would also have my support if they wanted to secede.
It would be an interesting experiment in separate but equal municipal services, and I cannot foresee how that concept could not possibly be poorly received…
Right. It was better that Bull Connor had jurisdiction and a monopoly on fire hoses. It would have been a shame had the black community its own institutions.
WHAT private healthcare providers? As in much of rural America, emergency medical responders in San Juan County are paid by the county government, drive county-owned ambulances, and are dispatched from the county sheriff’s dispatch center. Why should the county not have a say in how county money is spent?
This. I’d also oppose the white, Republican Mormons in Blanding if they were seeking to prevent the Navajo from seceding. The reason that’s not happening is that the Navajo don’t really have much the residents of Blanding have a desire to govern, but the residents of Blanding do have something the Navajo want to govern: a tax base.