“If your friend jumped in the river would you follow?” Moms of every generation are famous for that line and even today, as a grown man, it is hard not to roll my eyes at it. This question has been used universally to deny permission to take part in stupidity. It has various versions as well: ‘in the river,’ ‘off a bridge,’ or ‘over a cliff.’ I would propose asking this question of 49 of the 50 states. It is always said: “as California goes, so goes the nation.” Should our nation continue to follow California?

The programs and philosophies of our nation’s current administration and legislature would be right at home on the campus of Berkley and in the hallowed halls of Sacramento. Discouragement of business, attempts to saddle the free market with draconian controls and welfare programs designed to encourage dependency are just a few symptoms of the California flu spreading to other states and to the US Capital. The nanny state, distrust of individuality and inane attempts to ’spread the wealth’ leave one unsurprised at the tongue-in-cheek People’s Democratic Republic of California, or the oft heard “Left Coast.”

For too long Californians have allowed their democratically elected leaders to play social engineer and to design a state that is incompatible with individual freedom, all in the name of progress and social ‘justice.’ Unfortunately, the infection of other states is compounded by California’s own ineptitude. As people flee for their economic life, little do they realize that they carry the seeds of destruction to lay waste to their new home state. As they miss social programs and benefits they once enjoyed in California they steer the democratic process to institute these, never realizing they are recreating the failed system they fled. I have lived in the Western US all of my life, except for a brief time stationed on the East Coast in the Army. I have observed this pattern of Californicating all through the west.

Fear of Obama’s plans for this country have inspired many states to rightly reassert their rights under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution and these Constitutional questions are reviving talk of secession. I would propose a solution that would be far easier. Why not kick California out of the Union? Those who have created this monstrosity of a state would no longer be US citizens and unable to foul our political system. We are currently building a fence along the border with Mexico. Would it be too expensive to make a right turn and continue it to Oregon?

Of course only certain parts of California are the source of the radical political effluent. Most of the idiocy is along the coast from San Francisco south to San Diego. This is easy to handle by division. We could handle California like Virginia during the Civil War. The counties of Northwest Virginia chose to remain with the Union. They were severed off from the rest of the state and a new state of West Virginia was born. Let’s do this with California. The coastal left-leaning regions would be cut loose to form their socialist mecca (within a few years we could buy the land cheap from the survivors), while the rest of the state would be reconstituted as a replacement. Of course the name should reflect the historic act. Perhaps we call it Free California.