What do y'all think of the Cascadian Independence movement?
Yes there is a good deal of hippies and is probably inactive and yes they aren't hardline libertarians, there's also: an awesome climate, good location for secession and long coastline, genuinely appears to be an enthusiasm for secession, and a good place to spread a libertarian debate to. Here's the website:
http://www.cascadianow.org/
Do you care about secessionist movements? This one seems at least a tad more legit than FSP and it's got a certain degree of isolation and geographical characteristics which make it a plausible candidate for secession. Personally if I knew there was an opportunity to try to influence people's minds in a setting wherein a new constitution or government was being drafted, I would want to go there and try to influence it towards a market friendly society.
Isn't this a pretty good step towards what we're all looking for?
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
First I've heard of this. Sounds good.
I live there. Had no idea about this. Nice.
Clayton -
Oddly enough, I first read of this yesterday. Secession is something I am always interested in reading about.
The only one worth following is the one who leads... not the one who pulls; for it is not the direction that condemns the puller, it is the rope that he holds.
Digging around the website, it seems to be pretty wishy-washy and "green" overall. Photos of Michael Moore, etc. The only concrete policy concern is the environment.
Part of the problem here is that the geographic area is so large as to make any kind of actual secession politically impossible - the demarcated region even crosses national boundaries. Furthermore, the chosen criterion for boundaries is unprecedented and weird: the boundary of the Columbia watershed?
There is a tribe in Washington state that has a coastal reservation, including an inlet that looks to my non-expert eyes like it could be developed. It is a fairly small territorial area. I'm thinking if you could get the tribe's elders on board with a "free port" kind of thing, you could create a very problematic political situation for DC and the State government where the tribe's political claims to independence are insuperable (by virtue of the fact that all their other land was stolen in the first place, treaties violated, and so on) and economic independence (by virtue of connection to the ocean) is unstoppable. I think that would be a nice pie in the face of DC.