The State of Liberty

Once again, eastern Washington has threatened to leave and form its own state, Liberty. Once again, Western Washington is resorting to a series of flawed arguments. I just wanted to take some time to address some of these arguments.

One of the popular arguments is financial. I'm probably not the best person to explain this, and finances relate to more than just taxes, but I still want to point out the obvious.

Taxpayer funding tends to flow from urban areas to rural areas. How could the east cope with the loss of tax revenue? This can be answered by further explaining the tax situation. The West is paying the east for what the West wants. If we are spending inefficiently or for programs they don't want, these numbers become a lot less impressive. One of the simplest ways to address the loss of tax revenue would be to simply stop funding liberal programs that they don't want.

Of course, I'm pretty sure that money isn't the primary motivator of these talks. According to Democrats, this is an idea that shows conservative intolerance of liberals. The truth is pretty much the opposite. The east doesn't feel like they are being represented because the liberals in charge don't care about them. In some cases, our state government is showing outright hostilities to those who don't conform to the party of oppression.

Another talking point has related to the Senate. If Liberty became a state, this would provide the Republican party two more senators. Liberals like to point out how many people are represented by senators, but this is a misunderstanding of how the Senate is supposed to work. It's not just the people who are supposed to have rights in this country. The states are also supposed to have rights. The Senate was never supposed to represent the population. Besides that, what's the point of having both the House of Representatives and the Senate if both provide the same representation?

I should probably point out that the Democrats have been promoting statehood for the bulk of the District of Columbia. The entirety of their reasoning for statehood over the more logical approach of retrocession is because they want two more Senators.

Simply put, population shouldn't matter. If people are not being properly represented by their state government, they shouldn't be deprived of the opportunity solely on the basis of population.

Does this mean that I want the eastern half of the state to break away? I live in the Western half. It's not my decision to make. I want it to be their choice. This is despite my concerns that our state would become even further entrenched in hate, intolerance, oppression, mindlessness, conformity, authoritarianism, and everything else the Democrats stand for.