The Fifty State Solution

The Fifty State Solution
A drastic proposal to save the Obama presidency.
by John Hayward
05/23/2011

I’ve been thinking a lot about the controversial speech President Obama delivered at the State Department on Thursday. His call for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders, and divide itself into North and South Israel so the Palestinians can have a “contiguous” state, has been grabbing all the headlines. The rest of the speech was widely dismissed as a mixture of stale bromides and meaningless platitudes, but studying this foreign policy address has given me an idea for saving America from its economic hardship, and salvaging the remainder of the Obama presidency.

Everyone is buzzing about the “two-state solution” for Israel and Palestine. We should start talking about a “fifty-state solution” instead. My plan for renewed American prosperity can be summed up by one word: secession.

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about some ugly re-run of the Civil War, or carving out a few heartland states in a crazy scheme to build a libertarian utopia. I think all fifty states should secede, leaving only the District of Columbia behind.

Once the rest of us have seceded, we can expect Barack Obama to begin treating us the way he addressed the Middle East last week… and it’s an almost complete reversal of his domestic policies to date.

For example, in reference to the uprising in Tunisia, President Obama denounced “the relentless tyranny of governments that deny their citizens dignity.” Once the fifty states have seceded and become foreign territory, Obama will instantly become a tireless critic of the Transportation Security Agency. Among other outrages, the TSA has forced a woman to remove her prosthetic breast, left a cancer survivor soaked in his own urine after breaking the seal on his urostomy bag, and molested a 3-year-old child. This is the kind of bullying Barack Obama simply will not tolerate in other countries, so once we all become foreigners, he’ll step forward as an outspoken champion of our dignity and privacy.

Even more importantly, our economic future will brighten considerably. Imagine the boom that will begin once the President who currently buries domestic businesses under job-killing regulations, and wipes out entire industries with moratoriums in defiance of judicial orders, begins talking about building “networks of entrepreneurs” for the former United States!

The man who presided over the fastest, and largest, expansion of government power in modern history tells foreign audiences he will oppose attempts “by any group to restrict the rights of others, and to hold power through coercion – not consent.” Government is coercion. Barack Obama has infused the American system with a staggering amount of coercion over the last two years. His health-care “reform” alone will crush individuals and small businesses beneath thousands of pages of regulations, administered by thousands of new IRS agents, and enforced with stiff penalties. Only those with the connections to score an ObamaCare waiver from the royal court will be spared.

“Successful democrat transitions depend upon an expansion of growth and broad-based prosperity,” Obama told the people of Tunisia and Egypt. He’ll be telling us the same thing, once we are no longer his subjects. He’ll tell us to focus on “trade, not just aid, and investment, not just assistance,” as “protectionism gives way to openness, the reins of commerce pass from the few to the many, and the economy generates jobs for the young.”

That would be a complete 180-degree reversal from his first two years as President. After the secession, when a corrupt government agency tries to serve the interests of a powerful union by preventing a company from opening new facilities in a right-to-work state, they’ll call Barack Obama their worst enemy… instead of calling him their boss.

President Obama told the Middle East that prosperity requires “tearing down walls that stand in the way of progress - the corruption of elites who steal from their people; the red tape that stops an idea from becoming a business; the patronage that distributes wealth based on tribe or sect.” That’s a pretty good description of Obama-style crony capitalism: from billions of taxpayer dollars shoveled into the coffers of politically-connected but practically useless “green energy” companies, to the patronage of ObamaCare waivers that will free preferred unions, businesses, and states from the chains slapped on everyone else.

The best way to hear this President denounce those things, instead of imposing them on us, is to become the citizens of a foreign country. If we just pull America back to its pre-1776 borders, we’ll immediately gain Barack Obama’s energetic support for entrepreneurial risk, economic growth, resource development, and limited, accountable government. We’ll also increase his dismal productivity, since he won’t be jetting off to so many fund-raisers. Obama’s hatred of foreign money influencing domestic politics is a matter of record, so if all fifty states become foreign territory, he’ll be forced to spend a lot more time in D.C., attending to the actual duties of his nominal job.