Draper’s effort has already received over 800,000 signatures:
A multi-millionaire who believes California should be separated into six separate states says he has gathered enough signatures to place it on the ballot in two years.
Venture capitalist Tim Draper, 55, says the Golden State is too large to govern efficiently, and that people living there would be better served by a more localised government.
The technology investor has proposed splitting the state into six: San Diego and Orange County would become South California, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara would make up West California, the Sacramento area would be known as North California, and Bakersfield, Fresno and Stockton would make up Central California…
‘It’s important because it will help us create a more responsive, more innovative and more local government, and that ultimately will end up being better for all of Californians,’ said Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the campaign.
‘The idea … is to create six states with responsive local governments – states that are more representative and accountable to their constituents.
With this in mind, Pat Buchanan writes of “America: No Longer 1 Nation, 1 People“:
[W]ith the massive media coverage of the crisis on the border, immigration, legal and illegal, and what it portends for our future, could become the decisive issue of 2014 and 2016…
The real issue: Will America remain one nation, or are we are on the road to Balkanization and the breakup of America into ethnic enclaves?…
In Federalist No. 2, John Jay wrote, “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people – a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs… ”
He called Americans a “band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties.” The republic of the founders for whom Jay spoke did not give a fig for diversity. They cherished our unity, commonality and sameness of ancestry, culture, faith and traditions.
We were not a nation of immigrants in 1789.
They came later. From 1845-1849, the Irish fleeing the famine. From 1890-1920, the Germans. Then the Italians, Poles, Jews and other Eastern Europeans. Then, immigration was suspended in 1924.
From 1925 to 1965, the children and grandchildren of those immigrants were assimilated, Americanized. In strong public schools, they were taught our language, literature and history, and celebrated our holidays and heroes. We endured together through the Depression and sacrificed together in World War II and the Cold War.
By 1960, we had become truly one nation and one people.
Buchanan contrasts the above with where we are now:
We are a multiracial, multilingual, multicultural society in a world where countless countries are being torn apart over race, religion and roots.
We no longer speak the same language, worship the same God, honor the same heroes or share the same holidays. Christmas and Easter have been privatized. Columbus is reviled. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are out of the pantheon. Cesar Chavez is in.
If a country is a land of defined and defended borders, within which resides a people of a common ancestry, history, language, faith, culture and traditions, in what sense are we Americans one nation and one people today?
Neocons say we are a new kind of nation, an ideological nation erected upon a written Constitution and Bill of Rights. [This is the extent to which mainstream punditry is allowed to discuss the Jewish Question – Ed.]
But equality, democracy and diversity are not mentioned in the Constitution. As for what our founding documents mean, even the Supreme Court does not agree.
More and more, 21st-century America seems to meet rather well Metternich’s depiction of Italy – “a geographic expression.”
