Over the past five years, 33 counties in Illinois have voted to secede from the state, presumably to either form a new state or join another state. In most of these counties, the voters were given the option to vote yes or no on a ballot question that looked generally like this:
“Shall the board of (the county) correspond with the boards of other counties of Illinois, outside of Cook County, about the possibility of separating from Cook County to form a new state and to seek admission to the Union as such, subject to the approval of the people?”
Many of the voters and policymakers supporting the separation note that they consider themselves to be economically, culturally, and historically separated from Chicago and the counties surrounding it. Most of the state’s 13 million residents—more than nine million people—live within the greater Chicago metro area, but that potentially leaves one or two million people—a “state” the size of Montana or Nebraska—who are interested in breaking free of Chicago metro politics.
The fact that the secession efforts keep coming up again and again suggest some political staying power, as does a new development in Indiana: last week, the Indiana House of Representatives passed new legislation creating a Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Commission. The purpose is to facilitate the secession of separatist Illinois counties and their subsequent annexation into Indiana. This greatly simplifies the matter, politically. Were Indiana to actually annex Illinois’s separatist counties upon separation, the change would not even raise the problem of admitting a new US state.
Essentially, were Illinois and Indiana to redraw their border, the matter of Illinois’s secessionist counties would be of minor national impact. For virtually everyone in the United States, life would go on as it had before.
Yet, the Illinois ruling class, centered in Chicago, is dead set against the idea. Illinois’s Governor JB Pritzker called the secession effort a “stunt” and declared that it is “not going to happen.” The Illinois attorney general has declared the effort illegal, and critics have adopted the usual posture of those in power against secession efforts like these: a mixture of authoritarianism and patronizing contempt.
In this, the people who control the Illinois regime are similar to those in Oregon, Colorado, Maryland, and other states where outnumbered political minorities have realized they have no chance of receiving any sort of fair representation or political influence at the state capitol.
For example, several counties in Oregon have expressed interest in being part of neighboring Idaho, as part of the Greater Idaho Movement. Similarly, some activists in northern Colorado have proposed seceding from Colorado and joining Wyoming. Something similar has happened in western Maryland.
In every case, the response from the “people in charge” has been similar to the sneering, deprecating attitude we now see at work in Illinois. But, why does the governor of Illinois care so much if a small portion of the population wants to break off and go its own way? It’s difficult to see this dug-in opposition as anything other than a naked exercise in preserving political power and the status quo for those who currently enjoy positions of power and influence.
What Reasons Are There to Oppose Redrawing State Lines?
Some opposition stems simply from the fact that redrawing state borders is something different from the norm. A great many Americans can’t stand the idea of anything other than the status quo, no matter how obsolete the status quo has become.
For example, Illinois state representative Charlie Meier expressed the usual lack of imagination when asked about redrawing the Illinois border: “I don’t see it happening. If they allow Illinois to split off, what happens if California wants to split? They could end up being five states even or (let) Texas split up.”
The proper question for Meier here is, “so what?” So what if California wants to split up? Why is that any business of an Illinois state representative? It is often pointed out that no state can change its borders without approval from the US Congress. This is unfortunately true, and the clause requiring this is one of the more idiotic portions of the US constitution. The requirement of Congressional approval, however, is not a reason to oppose redrawing state lines. If anything, the Constitutional clause in question is a reason to send the proposed change to Congress and see what happens. (In a few decades, when the US begins to collapse on itself like the Soviet Union, this provision will either be changed, or it will be ignored.)
The inertia of the status quo is enough to keep many people clinging to the refrain of “this is the way we’ve always done it.” Will the intellectual heirs of these people be saying this fifty years from now? I can picture it now: “well, you see, we cannot redraw these borders. When Illinois was a vacant waste of swamps and forests, the US congress drew some lines on a map around the area. That’s what we did 250 years ago, and that can never, ever change no matter what, until the end of time!“
Opposing Democracy When the “Wrong” Side Wins
What other reasons could be given for such strenuous opposition to changing the borders of US states? Certainly, those in opposition cannot claim to have “democracy” on their side. After all, the secession measures are exactly what we would call “democracy at work.” In many of these cases, lopsided majorities voted to secede from Illinois. Are we to now say that majority rule doesn’t matter after all? Even when it doesn’t violate anyone’s property rights?
This, of course is exactly what Pritzker and friends would have you believe. Part of the privilege of being in the American political ruling class is being able to define “democracy” as whatever you want it to be.
A more likely motivation for opposing secession is good old fashioned paternalism.
We can see this manifest in a couple of ways. For one, those who oppose secession for these Illinois counties have said that rural parts of Illinois aren’t very productive and are essentially “welfare queen” counties. One would think that Illinois would therefore be happy to see them go. But no. Paternalism kicks in and the opponents of secession declare that the secessionists don’t know what’s good for themselves.
Paternalism also takes another form which appears when politicians declare that those lousy separatists aren’t “progressive” enough to be allowed to govern themselves. We see this in recent comments from Pritzker who has declared that the separatist counties must never be allowed to leave because then they would implement policies that are insufficiently enlightened. That is, the Illinois separatists might loosen up gun laws, cut the local minimum wage, or reduce other government regulations. Pritzker reaction to that is essentially “over my dead body.” Thus, democracy is rendered null and void if the ruling party doesn’t care for your politics. It’s simply the domestic version of the political imperialism that has always guided the anti-secessionist impulse: “we can’t let you leave because you might do things differently.”
Are These State Borders Sacred?
It’s important to remember that these states’ secession movements have no effect on geopolitical realities, or on federal revenue. In the cases where no new state would be formed, not even the US Senate would change. Yet, opposition to these minor changes to the status quo endure because politicians regard any such change as a threat to their power and their ability to impose their power as a means of rewarding their favorite interest groups.
Admittedly, a redrawing of state lines would produce some changes to the electoral college. In the case of redrawing the Indiana-Illinois border, Illinois might lose an electoral college vote, and Indiana could gain one. This, of course, is bound to fuel opposition, but all this means is that opposition to redrawing state lines is based on parochial partisan concerns, and hardly on any sort of principle.
Politicians try to cover their partisan motivations up, of course, which is why we see Pritzker opposing the counties’ secession —in a hamfisted appeal to feelings of Illinois nationalism—with the slogan “we are one Illinois.”
The opponents of state-level secession should give it a rest. Few people outside Illinois with families and jobs—and who want to mind their own business—care if the border between Illinois and Indiana is changed. The same is true of the line between Idaho and Oregon. These lines weren’t drawn by the Almighty. Politicians care deeply about such things, however, because they care deeply about power, and about preserving the status quo that has served the ruling class so well.
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