That wasn’t a dream; it was a rant. When I dream, it’s about Brooklyn Decker.
Sorry, I was attempting to be amusing, thus the winky face. If you’ve taken offense, think for a moment how others might take a seemingly serious assertion that they should be forced to choose between relinquishing their job, home and extended family to move to another state or being forcibly divested of their U.S. citizenship.
Yes, I can see how that would be a concern. At least, for everyone who thought that I was king of the world.
Hey, it’s your op. If you don’t want to discuss what the actual effects of what you’re proposing would be, why bring it up?
I don’t believe any significant number of poor people will move for “free healthcare”. We already have vastly different HC programs in different states, and I’m not aware of some great movement of people from one state to another. People move if they can get a job (and even then, many won’t), not so they can get “free healthcare”.
Besides, if that’s really a problem, impose a 5 year residency requirement before you can freeload on the system.
I’m happy to discuss the economic and political ramifications of secession, including the effect on people who would want to move, but don’t have the means to do so. But my impression was that you were talking about the ramifications, not of secession, but of my little rant about it. Apologies if I misunderstood you.
Let us not forget the stunning virulence of LW hostility to George Bush, not to mention their subsequent complacency about his successor’s continuation, and occasional expansion, of countless policies they once deemed abhorrent – all of which speaks directly to my original point that the defining factor is not race, but political positioning.
Could someone clue this newbie in on the meaning of OP? I’m sure it will be something embarrassingly obvious…
Depending on the context, original (first) post of the thread, or original poster, i.e. the guy who started the thread.
Embarrassingly obvious? Check.
Thanks, Tony
Well, despite the title, this thread seems to be more about some partition of the United States into Red State America and Blue State America, not just a Texas secession:
And also
and
So–by my count, in the 2012 Presidential election there were over 18 million “Blue Staters” in the Red States (Obama voters in states Obama didn’t carry) and nearly 35 million “Red Staters” in the Blue States (Romney voters in states Obama did carry), or nearly 53 million people on the wrong side of the line. Just to give an idea of the magnitude of the relocation y’all are proposing, the fairly infamous Greco-Turkish and Indo-Pakistani population exchanges clocked in at approximately 2 million and 14.5 million people, respectively. Of course, not every single Romney voter in the Blue States would necessarily want to give up their American citizenship, nor would every single Obama voter in the Red States decide to move away from their homes. On the other hand, those 53 million or so Americans are that minority of the population who actually voted. The non-voters might mainly be too apathetic to care which country they wound up in, but on the other hand, some are presumably so politically radicalized that they didn’t even vote (“Romney’s just a RINO! Why bother voting for one socialist instead of the other?!?” “Why even bother to vote for Obama? He’s just another centrist DINO corporatist sellout!”), plus I didn’t bother totalling up third party candidates, and those guys would be prime secessionist candidates. Other non-voters would include minor children who would presumably accompany their parents across the borders.
Just FYI, but large-scale population transfers like between Greece and Turkey in 1923 or India and Pakistan in 1947 tend to be very messy affairs, with lots of deaths and suffering and human rights violations.
Bottom line, though, is that fortunately Americans are not actually divided into “Redstatian” and “Bluestatian” ethnic groups, and only a few hotheads seriously support secession, with a somewhat larger minority claiming to support secession in online polls, but even in the reddest of Red States (or in Blue Vermont) the majority of the population does not actually want to partition the country.
Best caveat emptor I’ve read in a long time!
Attention, everybody: there ISN’T any secessionist movement in Texas worth taking seriously.
Texas isn’t going anywhere, no matter how much liberal Yankees may want it to.
Hawaii and Vermont have bigger secessionist movements than Texas does, and theirs aren’t worth taking very seriously either.
Sorry to break it to you, but you’re stuck with us.
But there appears to be a substantial sentiment outside of Texas to kick it out and leave the border open for the more liberal refugees.
But the Texas population keeps on growing, which means we’re ATTRACTING a lot more refugees than we’re exporting.
I suspect that trend goes out the window as soon as the new Texas Republic is announced.
But it’s not going to be announced. And many of the immigrants are from those Blue States–which means Texas will become more Democratic.
Sorry, been confusing my threads and answered under the assumption the seccession was a done deal.
Quite possibly, though that brings up an interesting questio: why do liberal Democrats keep fleeing from the states where their values reign supreme and moving to conservative states?
Because taxes and/or crime are too high in liberal states, perhaps? Because there aren’t any jobs being produced in liberal states? Perhaps.
But if you don’t like those things, why in the world would you move to a conservative state and then vote for the kinds of people who produced the conditions you’re fleeing?
The Confederacy didn’t have nukes.