Secession has apparently become respectable in the New Republic. You may remember that during the 90s, and during the Obama years as well, state secession was allegedly only the ideology of white, neo-Confederates who couldn't stand it that the Electoral College had put Clinton or Obama in charge. That, at least, was the position of the ADL  and the $PLC.

However, in the pages of VDARE.com,  we've noted that Michael Hart has a quite reasonable plan for a peaceful breakup, and we 've published his book Restoring America explaining how this could work.

Secession? Peaceful secession? Why would patriotic American want to do that? How, in any case, is it possible? Michael Hart lays out the answers in clear expository prose, pinned to reality at every point by historical precedent and scientific fact. The heart of his argument is a separation of the U.S.A., at county, not state, level into a rump "blue" nation pursuing current federal policies and a new "red" American Federal Republic (A/F.R.)—'a constitutional republic, with civil liberties fully protected.' The A.F.R. will begin with a new Declaration—Dr. Hart provides a full text—followed by a new Constitution containing clauses to prevent the evils that today threaten our liberties.

Now that the tide has turned has turned against the Left—partly because of  the good old Electoral College—we're seeing a hymn of secessionist and even expulsionist hate in the pages of the uber-respectable New Republic.

BLUEXIT: A Modest Proposal For Separating Blue States From Red, By Kevin Baker, New Republic, March 9, 2017

Dear Red-State Trump Voter,

Let’s face it, guys: We’re done.

For more than 80 years now, we—the residents of what some people like to call Blue America, but which I prefer to think of as the United States of We Pay Our Own Damn Way—have shelled out far more in federal tax monies than we took in. We have funded massive infrastructure projects in your rural counties, subsidized your schools and your power plants and your nursing homes, sent you entire industries, and simultaneously absorbed the most destitute, unskilled, and oppressed portions of your populations, white and black alike.

All of which, it turns out, only left you more bitter, white, and alt-right than ever.

Some folks here in self-supporting America like to believe that there must be a way to bring you back to your senses and to restore rational government, if not liberal ideals, sometime in the foreseeable future. Everyone seems to have an answer for how to do this. Every day another earnest little homily finds its way to me over my internet transom: “Think locally, act globally,” or “Make art and fight the power,” or the old Joe Hill standby—“Don’t mourn. Organize.”

To which I say: Don’t organize. Pack.

Not literally, of course. Not even the good people of Canada should have to stomach a mass migration of moping American liberals mumbling, “Live locally … make art.” What I mean is that it’s time for blue states and cities to effectively abandon the American national enterprise, as it is currently constituted. Call it the New Federalism. Or Virtual Secession. Or Conscious Uncoupling—though that’s already been used. Or maybe Bluexit.

Truth is, you red states just haven’t been pulling your weight. Not for, well, forever. Red states are nearly twice as dependent on the federal government as blue states. Of the twelve states that received the least federal aid in return for each tax dollar they contribute to the U.S. Treasury, ten of them voted for Hillary Clinton—and the other two were Michigan and Wisconsin, your newest recruits. By the same count, 20 of the 26 states most dependent on federal aid went to Trump.

Take Mississippi (please!), famous for being 49th or 50th in just about everything that matters. When it comes to sucking at the federal teat, the Magnolia State is the undisputed champ. More than 40 percent of Mississippi’s state revenue comes from federal funding; one-third of its GDP comes from federal spending; for every dollar it pays out in federal taxes, it takes in $4.70 in federal aid; one in five residents are on food stamps—all national highs. You people—your phrase, not mine—liked to bash Obama for turning America into what you derisively referred to as “Food Stamp Nation.” In reality, it’s more like Food Stamp Red America—something your Trump-loving congressmen will discover if and when they fulfill their vow to gut the program.[More]

I interrupt this hymn of hate to remind you that Mississippi is 37.0% percent black. That helps explain the poverty, but is Baker going to kick them out too, or take them home with him?

We've seen this kind of hate before—a Northern liberal named Chuck Thompson [Email him] wrote a book in 2012 called Better Off without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession, in which he forcefully wished that the American South would go away. (See South-Hating Author's Plan Would Have Saved 600,000 Lives In The 1860s.)

In the pages of the Daily Beast, Lee Siegel was even more hateful than Kevin Baker, above:

Just think what America would look like without its mostly Southern states. (We could retain “America”: they could call themselves “Smith & Wesson” or “Coca-Cola” or something like that.) Universal health care. No guns. Strong unions. A humane minimum wage. A humane immigration policy. High revenues from a fair tax structure. A massive public-works program. Legal gay marriage. A ban on carbon emissions. Electric cars. Stronger workplace protections. Extended family leave from work in case of pregnancy or illness. Longer unemployment benefits. In short, a society on a par with most of the rest of the industrialized world—a place whose politics have finally caught up with its social and economic realities.

“Memo to the South: Go Ahead, Secede Already!“,by  Lee Siegel, Daily Beast, April 30, 2013.

 A left-libertarian woman wrote us a letter saying that Siegel was trying to ethnically cleanse his Red State America, not just of white men, but of the people who really tend to hold Mississipi and other Southern states back:

The Southern states have the bulk of America's colored populations. Siegel is essentially fantasizing about kicking out all those inconvenient blacks and Hispanics so he can have his white leftist socialist welfare state with a population that won't turn it into Detroit. I believe that's known as “pulling the ladder up”. As one of VDARE.COM's left libertarian readers, I'm fine with some—not all—of the things he wants, but it's fascinating to see an admission that it can't and won't happen with your current population.

It's also fascinating to see secession in the New Republic.