A world away from Texas

[Joanne98]

There are calls for Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to split from the US and Canada. Cascadia is not a bad idea.

One (Olympic) flame dies – but maybe another flame flickers back into life. All hail Cascadia, the nationalist dream of a new, free land that puts the environment, culture and liberal values first? Don't laugh (though don't get too carried away either). The name may sound somewhere between patent water softener and Prisoner of Zenda. The logic of the idea, however, has plenty of hard thinking behind it.

In a sense, Thomas Jefferson started things rolling long ago. He saw no particular reason why any fledgling US should stretch to the Pacific. He was quite happy to countenance a separate republic way to the west. And so, of course, were the people who built the distant country where Oregon, Washington and British Columbia met. They dreamed of their own Cascadia, after the range of Cascade mountains that bound them together. They felt – as many still feel – that rule from Washington or Ottawa is governance simply too far.

What? You hadn't heard about the Cascadian Nationalist party and its entirely civil pursuit of separatism? That's not entirely surprising. When al-Qaida tore down New York's twin towers, it also put up walls of bureaucracy along the border that made driving from Vancouver to Seattle heavy duty security business. Stop, as I've done, at the Blaine frontier post where Highway 99 meets Interstate 5 and you'll find rather more hassle than at Dover to Calais.

But there is, nonetheless, some practical power here. Portland, Seattle and Vancouver are an almost continuous metropolitan belt. Think Leeds to Manchester to Liverpool. The maze of islands and promontories around Puget Sound make one natural entity. And the values of politics, almost of instinctive belief, are consistent too. Abortion, euthanasia, co-ops, gay marriage – even socialism as a word that may sometimes mutter its name? Cascadia might sit quite happily just outside Stockholm. Bush, Cheney, Fox News and Tea Party Texas are a world away.

Continued>>>>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/feb/28/cascadia-independence-america-canada-washington

[HeresyLives]

1. I dunno about Washington and Oregon,

but I'd say the author knows little about British Columbia. I won't even try to explain the politics there, but it has a conservative party in charge even tho they are called Liberals, and BC has a large Bible belt. They are also mainly dependent on forestry.

[cherokeeprogressive]

2. LOL. Portland to Vancouver is 315 miles. Leeds to Liverpool is 72.

The area between Portland and Vancouver is VERY sparsely populated. Leeds to Liverpool? Hardly a bit of countryside between one and the other.

I put this in the category of Alaska and the outrage at the notion that some Alaskan might want to secede from the US.