The Sunday Outlook section of The Washington Post offered a list of “Spring Cleaning” items, “things to toss out.” Some were light topics: Jonathan Capehart picked summer “Flip-flops.” But former Post defense reporter Thomas Ricks suggested we toss Texas out of the USA. “I’m just sick of ‘em and all their BS,” he proclaimed.
“For decades, Texans have been clamoring about leaving the Union. Letting the Lone Star State secede would set a bad precedent. (See the Civil War of 1861 to 1865.) But what about expelling it instead? There is promise in that.” It’s because they’re conservative:
We wouldn’t have the Dallas Cowboys, nor the right-wing oilmen the state seems to produce. Of course, we would also lose Gov. Rick Perry, who already is making the split easier with his talk of moving the roughly $1 billion in Texas gold reserves, now in a vault in New York, back into the state.
Then, strangely, he somehow equated Texas to communist East Germany:
Sure, there would be some problems. It would be harder to drive from New Orleans to Tucson. Perhaps we could hold on to the interstate highways through the former state — we built them, after all. They could be like the corridors for driving to West Berlin back in the days of the Soviet empire. Having Texas floating free could be destabilizing for Mexico — but we could probably build some fences to help handle that.
Texans have that Lone Star flag all set. I think they’re ready to fly solo and lonely once again. Let them go.
This, from the same guy who found "startling parallels" between George W. Bush and the King George of England that oppressed the American colonies.
PS: Jonah Goldberg was included in the Post roundup, and he suggested we toss out automatic tax withholding.
