Except that I suspect that eastern Washington, Oregon and BC, and all of Alberta would prefer to be part of greater Texas.

The best way to really figure out where the boundaries should be is to look at it by county, instead of by state. Then all you get is a few little socialist enclaves (unable to defend themselves, since they'd presumably outlaw guns) in a sea of Texas and Jesusland.

Half of Western Washington too.

We have 'The Space Needle State aka Berkeley North' and, well, the rest of it.

I also think they'd be shocked at how non-Quebec went. (At least, BC for sure.)

The Washington State governorship is within 1000 votes with thousands of absentees to count.

If you exclude the three most populous counties (King, Pierce and Snohomish) and Olympia in Washington and the Willamette Valley (Portland to Eugene) in Oregon, you get another Nevada or even Idaho. The crest of the Cascades is more than just a hydrographic divide, but a political one, too.

Cool. San Diego's the only Pacific port in the United State of Texas, and since we're certainly keeping the Pacific Fleet (what would Canada do with it?), I guess all the NorCal based-ships move here...

Of key concern here, UST has all the spaceports depending on if you count 'landing zones' etc.

What would the Camericans eat? At least in the graph on the right, I see no usable ag land.

George as someone who is from Alberta, and has seen the monotonous farm land in Saskatchewan I think I can safely say that they would have enough to eat. As much as being part of Greater texas might be a practical matter for Alberta, I think I would prefer Colorado.

I say that for Illinois, we carve out Chicago and its suburbs for the US of C and keep the rest in JesusLand.

Coincidentally, my (conservative Catholic) family tried to go to Jesusland in Orlando last winter. We weren't able to get in (we were silly and thought it'd be open on Christmas for some reason), but it certainly looked interesting:

http://www.theholylandexperience.com/

Everything is bigger in Texas - including Texas itself.

Years ago I joked about forming a Mirabeau B. Lamar Society, in honor of the Sam Houston contemporary who once voiced his vision for a nation of Texas extending from the Gulf to the Pacific. Ironically, that turf roughly overlaps that claimed my MEChA.

Here in Alberta we prefer to think that it is Texas that would want to join us.

So as populated areas increase we will eventually just crush all of you red. Ha ha ha ha ha (evil laugh).

So as populated areas increase we will eventually just crush all of you red. Ha ha ha ha ha (evil laugh).

I'm an athiest, I'm working on a PhD at Harvard, and I'm fairly generally liberal (unsurprisingly, I suppose). It seems like both liberals & conservatives actually like this idea of splitting the nation in two and being rid of eachother. A lot. (See the freerepublic discussions) Is it plausible? No, probably not. I don't believe any of us actually want civil war, but it would be almost inevitable given the resources that would have to be divided up, and the interweaved populations in many regions of the country. I'm surprised, though, that even the suggestion of liberal secession hasn't elicited expressions of outrage from conservatives about it being traitorous and unamerican. Would it be regarded that way, or would the response truly be "good riddance"?

I find myself wondering what the country would look like if Bush were successful in pushing through (what I regard as) a traditional conservative agenda, shrinking the federal government to almost nothing except national defense, and giving back a great deal of power to the states. Given the vast differences in cultural mores between the Blue & Red states (or between the U.S. of Canada and Jesusland, if you prefer) maybe it really wouldn't be so bad to have dramatically different laws on abortion, marriage, stem-cell research, school prayer, drug legalization, etc. We (liberals) dislike your (conservative) religious values intruding into our lives; you dislike our secular values intruding into yours. Perhaps secession isn't necessary to make us both happy, and the triumph of states-rights conservatism would be enough.

One other aside: why are you folks in the sea of red so concerned about the war on terror? Al-Qaida isn't going to bomb your farmland in West Texas. If they strike again, what would you estimate the chance is they strike a blue (metropolitan) area? I have to guess 90%. Any thoughts?

Well said, Miles.

One other aside: why are you folks in the sea of red so concerned about the war on terror?

We're humanitarians. If we'll root for the prosperity and freedom of Iraqis and Afghans, we'll root for the prosperity and freedom (but not the policies) of people who we do business with and (in many cases) live next door to. And a lot of us live in big cities - big targets that might get attacked some day if we return to the laxity of the past 30 years.

Miles, what is the subject of your Ph.D., if you wouldn't mind saying?

Carl: I'm in cognitive psychology - I do research on one tiny little part of how people reason. It has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. :-)

Thank you, Miles.

Merch-Bot.com has shirts with the Jesusland joke on them:
http://www.merch-bot.com/product_info.php?products_id=149

i've already ordered mine!

The red states provide most of the men and women fighting for freedom today. Most of them understand that the world is a very small place and getting smaller every day. We stuck our heads in the sand during the 90's, just as we did in the 30's and thought that those lunatics in the training camps in Afghanistan would never hurt us, even though Osama issued his fatwa in 1998 telling his followers to "kill the infidel no matter wher you find him" It only took 19 of them out of 30,000 graduates, to kill 3000 on 9/11. I guess the red state residents understand that there is no new in the world, only history you don't know about.

Splitting up the U.S. in this manner does pose a big problem for Red America -- it would suddenly have to support itself.

The Blue States heavily subsidize the Red ones; Blue State money builds the highways you couldn't afford to build across your vast expanses with your proportionately small populations, pays the salaries of the soldiers stationed on your soil and all the infrastructure supporting them, sends money to feed your vast reservoirs of rural poor, and doles out money to all the retirees who've settled in your neighborhoods.

The chief economic effect of separation would be that the Blue States would get richer and the Red Ones even poorer.

Careful what you wish for...

Splitting up the U.S. in this manner does pose a big problem for Red America -- it would suddenly have to support itself.

Forgotten where the food grows, have you?

Carl,

Forgotten where the farm subsidies come from?

Do you seriously believe that absent farm subsidies, the Midwest would stop growing food?

Rand,

There's more to it than that. They also get their financing from somewhere outside the region, not to mention the financial cost of the infrastructure that allows the Red States to transport their goods to market. Also, the technological advances that increase farm productivity come almost exclusively from the Blue States, since that's where the brain power is (there is a direct correlation between education level by region and voting choices, with Bush's Red States getting the low end of that deal).

Sure the Red States would go on growing, but they'd be in a heap of trouble financially, and their citizens would have to bear a crushing burden of new taxes they don't have to deal with now. There would probably be more subsistence farming.

The red states would have plenty of money to do as they needed since they wouldn't be spending it all on welfare for the blue states

Neal,

You've got it backwards. As I said previously, it's the Red States who contribute less to the federal government than they give back. They're effectively on the dole, courtesy of the Blue States.

In addition to the reasons I cited above, there is also the mildly progressive federal tax system we have -- wealthier people pay a higher percentage in taxes than poorer people, and there are a LOT more wealthy people in the Blue States than the Red. So Blue States wind up contributing more to the treasury.

Of course, Red State Hero President Bush promises to demolish the progressive tax system and replace it with a flat tax, at which point the Red States will see their taxes go way up and Blue States will see theirs go way down.

Paul, seeing as Rand was right on the money about Alberta being more inclined to join the US of T than stay within an expanded Canada, financial issues are moot.

Alberta supports the rest of Canada for the most part (Ontario does its share too). If Alberta were to leave Confederation and join the US of T at the same time as the Blue States joining Canada, not much would really change. Except that the majority of North America's energy reserves would be in the US of T.

And a kudos to Rand for knowing the feelings of Western Canadians. While not major separatists, a lot of westerners have more in common with the Red States than Central Canada or the Maritimes. The Blue States seem to not be too knowledgable about Canada, perhaps this graphic would help:

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/exilemap.jpg

It is a map of how the US voted in the last election, with how Canada voted in our June 2004 election, colour-coded for the benefit of the US audience (our colours are normally inverted from yours, with Western Canada conservative blue).

Lonni,

Thanks for the info and map.

Not sure how the transfer of Alberta to the U.S.T. would change anything -- the huge financial advantage still lies with the Blue states, American and Canadian. Is Alberta really wealthy enough to send money to the U.S. red states to prop them up? My guess is that, like the Red States, Alberta is sparsely populated and not terribly industrial.