Bob Bird: Reshuffling the American and Alaskan deck

By BOB BIRD

The proud American union is a union by force — as was feared with Patrick Henry’s warning in 1788, and later proved by President Abraham Lincoln in 1861.

That’s what we have, and we have made the best of it, despite our history that spilled much American and native blood to achieve it. Each state is uniquely different, and the circumstances of admission changed as the frontier moved westward. 

Look at the 1785 map of the U.S. shortly after we won our independence. Because of western land claims, we might have had “Chicago, Connecticut”, “Milwaukee, Massachusetts,” or “Memphis, North Carolina”. 

The American states have operated under three different authorities, beginning with an unwritten provisional government in 1776. After the Treaty of Paris yielded British territory as far as the Mississippi River, the supposedly weak and ineffective Articles of Confederation — our first written constitution — convinced states that their land claims west of the Appalachians were unrealistic. As settlers moved west, Congress drew up new states, matching equal sovereignty with the Original Thirteen, and a harmonious union emerged … for a time.

As land was acquired through treaties, wars and purchases, the size of the U.S. became increasingly unwieldy, and the federal government assumed more centralized powers. The 14^th state, Vermont, denying the claims of both New Hampshire and New York, declared its own sovereignty and then applied for admission to the union, but this was not a good template for the future.

Congress designed unorganized territories, organized territories and states based on the whims of committees and their chairmen. They were as wise as they were foolish, depending on the geography, native considerations and emerging economies and culture. Slavery created tensions that mandated compromises, which although were creative, merely swept the dirt under the rug, leading to the great war and federal power grab of the 1860s – 70s.

Our third constitution, which we call The Constitution with a capital “C”, likely anticipating that committees often make grotesque and misshapen mistakes, permitted the re-drawing of state boundaries with the following proviso in Article IV, Sec. 3:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

Tennessee was fractured off from North Carolina in 1796 and Maine from Massachusetts in 1820. Then we tread into dangerous waters, because the state of West Virginia was illegally created in 1863, just one of the many drastic and dangerous constitutional overthrows under Lincoln’s supposedly avuncular and wise hand. Indeed, it was a good move for the people of those western counties of Virginia. But “good” does not necessarily mean “constitutional”, and by paying indemnity to Virginia well into the 20^th century, a de facto apology was made.

Now we live in an era of ideological separation, and it is becoming intolerable. It is a “rural” versus “urban” divide, and with it comes warped perceptions of reality from the poor souls who live in the asphalt jungles of our decaying urban zones. They have never seen a farm, sat in a small town café, smelled manure, or inhaled the delicious fragrance of the forests that are only a few miles away, even in New York. 

Chicago continues to sprawl from its dark and filthy slums into the flatlands of Illinois, as people escape from crime and ugliness, yet bring with them the untenable ideas of socialism to pollute new areas. The same has occurred in New Hampshire and southern Maine from the Boston area. Then ask anyone in Montana, Nevada, Idaho or Arizona if they fear the same problem from Californians who bring their socialist baggage with them, even as they escape the results of those policies.

Eastern Washington and Oregon, northern California, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York and Minnesota, and downstate Illinois are locked in the tyrannical bear hug of socialism that their population centers force upon them. It translates into government corruption, high taxes, public school indoctrination, atheistic political correctness and the loss of freedom and evils of the fake Climate Change Cult.

Alaska is not immune to this. Southeast Alaska has little in common with the road system (which includes Prudhoe Bay), and the road system has little in common with Southeast or the Arctic and western villages. It is political suicide to say this, but I am not an elected official, so I will do it: Southeast lives off of the productivity of the road system, is a two-day drive through a foreign country to reach, and demands that the road system pay for the sustenance of its economic livelihood.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Southeast has an untapped mining and logging economy, but it is locked up by the federal Green Lobby that it seems to worship. While its cultural focus is on Seattle, Southeast demands that the state capital remain with them, defying the will of the people that has never been changed since 1974. It would seem that if they like their lifestyle of tourism and a stagnant economy, they ought to apply for admission to Washington state — if Washington would want to assume this albatross around their necks.

This cannot last much longer. America and Alaska are going broke, and must undergo an authentic re-shuffling, whether it be a geographic or an ideological one. It will hopefully be one of our own making, uncontrolled by the evil forces of communism that exist in Pacific Rim foreign governments, with their bought and willing enemies of freedom within our own ranks.

Bob Bird is former chair of the Alaskan Independence Party and the host of a talk show on KSRM radio, Kenai.