Independence Movements

The successful vote for Britain to leave the EU, Brexit, has given new life to other independence movements. It's no surprise that Scotland is putting independence from Britain back on the table. They wanted to stay in the EU. Same goes for Northern Ireland. Those two movements look likely to succeed.

Of course, Texas independence movements are not new, but they do have a catchy new name, Texit. Now I don't want to mess with Texas, but didn't they push really hard to get into the US the last time they were their own nation? Maybe they should get back to their roots . . . as Northern Mexico.

Okay, I'm just having a little fun here, but then I came across this movement, NH Independence. I'm a citizen of NH and this is the first I've ever heard about them. We do have the Free State Movement but they pretty much are working within the system to change it from within. It's difficult to make any broad sweeping statements about what the Free Staters as they are a bunch of independent thinkers who often disagree amongst themselves.

So where does this all end? At some point do we want to split my town apart because we are in two different river valleys? Do we spit across religious lines? Throw out the French Canadian immigrants who've been coming over the border?

I'm trying to put all this into some sort of historical perspective. We've been in a long period where smaller groups have been clumping together to form larger and larger nations. The US was a bunch of young states that ended up forming a powerful Federal system. The EU was a bunch of older countries that formed a different sort of unit, strong in some areas and weak in others.

In more recent years we've had a breaking apart of big collective units. The USSR is no more, broken apart into many states. Even smaller countries have split apart, North and South Sudan, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Canada almost lost Quebec. There are a lot of little independence movements in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa that hardly anyone has heard about but some of them could be successful. In general, we seem to see a trend where people want to form smaller groups.

I can't even start to figure out the situation in China. They've been going against recent trends with the addition of Hong Kong. However, China is in a state of flux and anything can happen there.

The US could stay a nation but with the individual states once again running their own affairs. Federal powers could be severely limited like they were in the early days of the republic.

Things could turn ugly with a bunch of little squabbling nations continually at odds with each other -like the way Europe used to be. The trick is to get the benefits of a close knit group but without the wars.

I'm also a big fan of freedom of movement. In the US people don't even think about it when they drive across state lines. It was getting that way in Europe, until the refugees swarmed over the borders. Now borders are tightening up.

On a personal level I love freedom. That's one reason I still call NH, the “Live Free or Die” state home. I get that people want to go their own way. If we can do it in so that we can avoid the mistakes of the past, I'm all for it. Just how that's to be done, I'm not sure. Maybe we can replace the United Nations with a system that actually works. Little nations in constant war was bad enough. Now that many of them have access to nukes, chemical and biological weapons, it's unacceptable. The human race has got to get its act together.

-Sixbears