Real independence comes in disunity. Let’s break California up on this Fourth | Opinion
The further I drove into Oroville, the more disappointment I felt.
I had my passport with me, but no one asked me to show it. American flags still hung from Montgomery Street storefronts. City Hall had not been replaced by a national capitol. And I could find no new standing army or an Oroville Food and Drug Administration.
It was as if the city council of Oroville (population 20,000), 70 miles north of Sacramento, had never made national news in 2021 by declaring itself a “constitutional republic.”
Too bad. Because there is no greater creative force than the commitment to declare independence and build something new.
That’s the spirit we should celebrate on Independence Day. But it’s been a long time since Independence Day was about independence.
Instead, we put on displays of national unity — even though unity has produced so many awful things in our country. We the people came together to adopt a constitution that enshrined slavery and shunned democracy. In the name of unity, we ended Reconstruction, launched Jim Crow and pursued unnecessary wars.
The United States only truly advances through disunion. We needed a civil war to end slavery. Every expansion of rights required social movements that divided us. Our technological breakthroughs often came from people who went off on their own, from Kitty Hawk to Cupertino.
Today, California’s real problem is not lack of unity, but our absence of interest in breakups. Oroville isn’t the only disappointment.
Who, for example, switched all the coffee in San Bernardino County to decaf this year?
Last fall, voters directed the county to study greater autonomy “up to and including secession from the State of California.” That verdict portended a wholesale rethinking of county government here and some even hoped that San Bernardino would dream bigger than just statehood, and go for nationhood. But eight months later, there has been little serious study of statehood.
In Northern California, the longstanding push for a state of Jefferson, which drew broad local government support in the early years of this century, seems at low ebb. It’s been eclipsed by the effort by rural counties in Oregon, some of which border California, to split off from the Beaver State and join “Greater Idaho.”
This spring, El Dorado County, which includes Lake Tahoe, saw the launch of a new secession effort, the Republic of El Dorado. But again, the effort doesn’t have a clear vision of a governing future. It’s also built on the legally dubious claim that the county can make itself a state without any sign-off from Congress or the California Legislature.
There are other local acts of defiance that could evolve into something bigger, but haven’t yet. Our state is full of sanctuary cities that have developed new ways to protect and serve unauthorized immigrants and their families. School boards, notably in Temecula, have limited access to books or taken conservative stands in the culture wars, thus challenging the state. The city of Huntington Beach and the state are suing each other over housing laws, though it seems unlikely that the outcome will boost housing, much less change the nature of local government in California.
Meanwhile, other, more established ideas for independence in California remain dormant. Bay Area investor Tim Draper, who proposed splitting California into multiple states, is now consumed by cryptocurrency instead. Los Angeles, in political crisis, might benefit from the relaunch required by a breakup, but the San Fernando Valley secession movement, which triggered a citywide vote a generation ago, is all but dead.
That’s a shame. As historian-journalist Richard Kreitner observed in his 2020 book “Break It Up, “ “secession is the only kind of revolution we Americans have ever known and the only kind we’re ever likely to see.”
So, on this Independence Day, let’s celebrate our country by plotting to break away and build something new.
We’re disunited. And that makes us great.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square .
