‘You Can Check Out Anytime You Like, But You Can Never Leave’—Rural Voters Want Out of Secession’s Hotel California
By Greg Maresca
England’s King George III found out the hard way that the very genesis of the American ethos is running our own affairs liberated from bureaucratic control.
The United States was born out of secession.
Like in 1860, secession debates raged from sea to shining sea throughout the American Republic. The latest can be found in rural southern Illinois. Seven counties voted to secede from Illinois in a landslide vote that received little national attention this past November. Six of the seven approved the measure by more than 70%.
Leaving “the land of Lincoln” to escape the chains of poor governance has been a generational issue. Over 50 years ago, 16 counties in Western Illinois wanted to secede in a region called “Forgottonia.”
The tax rates between Indiana and Illinois present a clear dichotomy: Indiana’s is 3.05% compared to 4.95% in Illinois. The corporate tax rate in Indiana is 4.9% compared to 9.5% in Illinois, where Democrats control all three branches of state government. Republican counties have no influence despite paying their taxes to fund a state in perennial debt. Illinois’ fiscal undoing only leads to higher taxes time and again. Moreover, according to the U.S. census, Illinois had the third highest state out-migration, nationwide, while Indiana gained 30,000 residents in 2023.
Many of Illinois’ problems rest with long-time State House Speaker and Chairman of the Illinois’ Democrat Party, Michael Madigan, who was recently found guilty on ten counts, including bribery.
Public unions have made the state tone-deaf to everything but the unions themselves. Unions own the Democrats who view taxpayers as breathing ATMs. A 2022 study by the University of Illinois Chicago ranked Illinois as the second most corrupt state in the nation, with four out of the last 11 governors serving time in prison.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called the secession vote a “stunt.” He reinforced the Big City notion of rural secession’s Hotel California – “You can check out anytime you’d like, but you can never leave.”
However, few agree, including Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston who welcomed the results.
Illinois is essentially a red state, with Chicago and Cook County dominating the rest. The same is true in New York and New York City and in Pennsylvania with Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Many states would be better purging their leftist cities. Perhaps Illinois kicks out Chicago, resulting in Democrat cities and Republican states – with New England as the exception.
Democrat overlords will never agree to allow counties to leave. These counties are in their own version of the Hotel California. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
Likewise, as Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: “no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”
Those seven magnificent counties of Illinois are far from alone.
Eastern Oregon wants to join Idaho, while southern New Mexico wants to join Texas. Conservative slices of Democrat-dominated states are growing; 11 counties in Eastern Oregon want to secede as Greater Idaho, a move Idaho supports. Some Texas Republicans support “Texit,” where the state becomes an independent nation.
Secession is not solely a conservative affair. “Cal-exit,” a movement for California to leave the American union after 2016, was a serious attempt at secession.
Contemporary America does have exemplars of separatism. Florida’s Disney World and their “special tax district” is one that received a fair amount of recent ink. Disney has its own separate governing entity that builds and maintains its own infrastructure while saving millions, bypassing zoning laws for decades until Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called them out.
There are over 35,000 similar shadow governments nationwide.
Through it all, no Republican-led counties want to join the Democrat plantation. Since Democrats are ideally woke, one would think those trapped in Republican states would flock to their socialist DEI utopia. The “party of unity” can’t even keep its own states united.
When does Secession’s Hotel California stop? When do the Democrat Marxist policies finally reach their inevitable end?
It begins by voting with one’s feet for a state with accountability and common sense.
And move before Democrats enact a King George III ransom departure tax.
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