Came upon an article that got me to thinking. What if both conservatives and liberals could agree on disagreeing and finally do what was necessary - secession.

The article below was paraphrased and adapted from the link below. I have changed it some to represent current events and to take away some of its liberal slant.

Hope you enjoy.

Secede Now!: When the split can't be healed, just get it over with.

It seems extreme, I know, but over the last few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the best way for Americans to get some feeling of satisfaction with their government is for our nation to be split apart. If we are ever to move beyond the inaction resulting from our political divisions, Liberal America needs to secede from the Union, and conservative America needs to do the same. Only through a mutual decision to part ways will Americas ever get anything even close to what they want from their government.

It seems like a radical policy, and that's because it is. However, radical treatment is sometimes the only effective treatment. The union of the American states has become taken for granted even as old regional wounds are working their way back up to the surface. The time for a discussion of secession to begin is now.

To Split is to Heal

The other day, I spent about half an hour talking with a veteran member of the Green Party who is running for office in my area. He accuses the Republican Party and the Democratic Party both of preventing people like him from even running in elections, although this year the Democrats don't even have a candidate, and he could have easily have become the Democratic nominee just by getting people to sign a qualifying petition.

The more I listened to him, the more I heard him give out information that was either out of date or just plain wrong. He accused anti-war activists of being pro-war just because they don't favor the Green Party plan. He talked about the progress of Green Party organization, when in fact, the Green Party in his state has been decommissioned because of lack of popular support. He went on and on, spinning an elaborate tale of persecution, built upon a foundation of profound ignorance.
The most distinct impression I had of this Green candidate is that he was a kook. However, his efforts at communication were so intensely devoted in their description of a world gone wrong that I've spent the last week thinking about how someone like him can come to feel so abandoned by the powers that be.

Certainly, the Greens, the Independents, the Libertarians and all the other tiny alternative political parties seem to feel especially alienated. It occurred to me, however, that just about everybody is feeling this way right now. Voters who identify themselves with mainstream political parties feel isolated just as much as the Green Party candidate I spoke to. They join huge teams of political activists with incredible power, and yet they feel like victims of a political process that does not listen to them.

In short, when it comes politics in America these days, almost nobody is really getting what they want.

The Roots of Disaffection

The way I see it, a big part of the reason for the nearly universal feeling of political alienation among Americans is that we've been forced to muddle through in a middle ground that satisfies nobody. Oh, political commentators love to talk about the wisdom of the "moderates" who take the best ideas from different groups, but nowadays that wisdom seems like garbled, inconsistent foolishness to the American voters. It's no wonder, given how long we have suffered from the nonsense of a political system in which compromises end up creating ideological hybrids that are infertile and often so ornery that they are not worth the trouble of taming.

In our national, state and local legislatures, conservative and liberal proposals alike have their most effective components stripped out in favor of legislation that can muster majority support from within a collection of politicians who do not share a common goal. It's as if the ship of state is receiving orders to steer to starboard and port at the same time. It's no wonder that we never seem to get anywhere.

America is like a dysfunctional family right now. The siblings are fighting, and our political parents give us solutions to our squabbles that suit each of us just barely, and so really suit none of us at all. In this family, when we order a pizza, half of us want mushrooms and sausage while the other half wants pineapple and barbequed chicken. Under the current system, what we get as a result is a pizza with mushrooms and barbequed chicken, and no one likes it. What's a family to do?

What We Really Want

The first step to getting what we want is admitting what we really want. This means complete honesty, even if we don't think that other Americans will like what they hear. For generations, American politicians (and most other Americans too) have been playing a disingenuous game in which they don't ever say what they really want to do with the power of public office. They make
hints, but are careful not to upset supposed "moderates". They speak blatant untruths in the attempt to appeal to swing voters. Barack Obama said he did not want to raise taxes. George W. Bush insisted he never wanted to go to war. We all know it's a load of bull, but when we get into political debates with people who disagree with us, we make the very same claims, in order to seem more reasonable to the majority in the room.

When it comes down to it, conservatives want an America in which there is almost no regulation of business, where people can do whatever they want to with their own property, and lawsuits are possible only when offenses are obvious and grave. Conservatives want to be able to whack down the forests to put in big shopping malls, and dig the heart out of the mountains. Conservatives want to keep the petroleum-based economy. Conservatives want a higher population. They want blacks and other ethnic minorities to live in separate communities. They want gays to go away completely. Conservatives want guns to be readily available to whomever wants some. They want a big military with a big nuclear arsenal. They want to go to war frequently. They want almost no taxes, and almost no government service other than the military. Conservatives want abortion to be
illegal. Conservatives want Christianity to be at the heart of American government.

Liberals want more taxation to grow a bigger government to provide more government services, especially from the wealthy. Liberals want to manage business through regulation, and want to the ability to file suit at any time they believe that they have been wronged, no matter how small. Liberals want more wilderness and want less sprawl, even if it means that they can't make as much money as they would otherwise. Liberals want to keep the population down, through
population control, including abortion. Liberals would like to do away with the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Liberals want to develop alternative energy, at the expense of traditional forms.
Liberals would like to use the government to advance the minority interests including those of a different ethnicity, creed, gender or sexual preference. Liberals want to give more funding to schools and want a much weaker military. Liberals want to do away with nuclear weapons. They want society to be secular, reserving religion to one’s personal life.

I say we give both groups the America they want.
Time For Divorce

When a husband and wife want to do completely incompatible things with their lives, it's time for a divorce. Now, America is split almost 50/50 between liberals and conservatives. Liberals and conservatives have almost completely incompatible goals for America, and we can't come to a compromise that satisfies our needs. It's time for a divorce. I'm calling upon America to break up.
The map provided provides one attempt to represent what the seceded nations would be comprised of. Since this was made soon after the 2004 election, it represents those results. Please see the original article for an explanation.
Keeping the Peace

The trouble with secession is that it could lead internal disagreements to become international conflicts. Keeping the peace between the new, smaller American states would be quite a challenge, and it would take a huge amount of discipline.

The right way to start would be to make secession a mutual agreement. Instead of state-led secession of the kind that caused the civil war, we need an act of Congress which would then be ratified by the states - one final act of compromise.

One of the best reasons for hope in the post-secession world would be the inward focus of all the new American nations. Each one would be finally free to follow, with much greater consistency, the political philosophies favored by their citizens.

To be sure, the future of a seceded America would be uncertain. However, there would be much greater potential for Americans of different philosophies to realize their political goals. The ultimate prize would be smaller, but at least the prize would be attainable. Without secession, Americans of all political persuasions would continue in their anger and frustration for generations to come. That much in anger boiling within the most powerful nation on Earth is good for no one. I say that it's time to share the power by splitting the power.

Getting real

To be honest, I know that secession is not a likely possibility. For some reason, Americans take pride in their country as a complete unit, and have come to be unable to imagine that it could exist in any other form than what its current borders encompass. They forget that just 50 years ago there were not 50 states in the Union.

Still, there is value to considering the idea of secession, even if we never actually follow through with it. There are steps that we can take that would effect some of the benefits of secession without creating the threat of civil war.

We could become more engaged on the local level. Instead of just complaining about how we're not represented by the Democrats or Republicans, we need to get become active and informed in local politics, and work to ensure that our liberal or conservative ideals are given a better chance to work.

National news gets more attention because it deals with really big issues. It's easy to feel out of control of the big things. However, by dealing with the world little right around you, you'll help to build a political presence in America that is strong, no matter who is occupying the White House and Capitol Hill.

(Taken from http://www.irregulartimes.com/secedenow.html)