Los Angeles — Liberals used to hate secession, the notion that states could leave the Union as they did before the Civil War because they didn’t agree with the policies of the federal government. But with Donald Trump’s election, many California liberals suddenly have warm words for a budding ballot initiative that has just begun collecting signatures in order to place secession, or “Calexit,” on the ballot.

(Article by John Fund from Nationalreview.com)

At the height of the tea-party movement, Texas governor Rick Perry merely hinted at the thought that Texas might react to President Obama’s executive overreach by reclaiming its one-time status as an independent republic. He was denounced as something akin to a traitor; critics lamented that he wanted to return Texas to the era of sharecroppers or Jim Crow. Now Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California, says “California is the new Texas,” with its elected officials promoting a “virtual secession.” The secessionists plan to take to the legislature, the courts, and the streets to resist Trump’s agenda. Never before have so many prominent Californians gotten into such a reactionary, defensive crouch.

Some of their rhetoric resembles that of the “massive resistance” movement in the 1950s South, which vowed to fight federal intrusion into the right of states to run their own discriminatory elections, segregate public schools, and ignore federal law enforcement. Assembly speaker Anthony Rendon has warned Trump that he better not dare to go after any of the state’s estimated 2 million illegal immigrants: “If you want to get to them, you have to go through us.” Governor Jerry Brown vows to block any attempt to divert California from its radical plan to limit carbon emissions: “We’ve got the scientists. We’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight.” State attorney general Xavier Bacerra says one of his top priorities is the “resistance” against Washington’s deportation of illegal immigrants, even to the point of paying their legal fees to fight the federales.

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