Making Something Old New Again

I was wandering through an antique mall yesterday, where my wife was looking for a piece of furniture to repurpose as a TV stand, when my eye fell upon a forty-nine star U.S. flag being offered for sale. That flag, with a field bearing seven rows of seven stars each, was the official flag of the United States for only one year, from July 4, 1959 to July 4, 1960, in between the admission of Alaska to the union on January 3, 1959 and the admission of the State of Hawaii on August 21, 1959.

I couldn't resist purchasing the flag, which although somewhat soiled, was a nice example with gold braiding and fringe around three sides. It seemed that there couldn't have been that many of them made; a notion, which was later, corrected when I discovered that new examples were still available on line. Nevertheless, I was glad to have bought it, wondering only what it was that I would do with it.

Then it struck me that there was a path to once again make this banner the official flag of the United States. We would need only to expel a superfluous state from the Union. The question became, which one?

What state among the fifty is such a drag on the progress of the nation that we would be better off without it? Would it be one of the poorer states? That hardly seemed fair, with the problems that those people suffer only standing to be magnified by a new and unwanted independence. What about those experiencing so many climatic disasters? No, it would result in similar unwarranted hardship. Hey, what about a state that had already expressed the desire to secede, both through the White House website and through the pronouncements of its chief executive? Yes indeed, that should work, and we have just such a state chafing under the yoke of our federal system. Texas.

Texas already has experience governing itself as an independent republic, so reassuming that mantle shouldn't be too high a lift, and so many Texans have expressed notions of how they should be governed that simply are not reconcilable with our Constitution and federal system. It would be an opportunity for the people there to create the sort of libertarian government that they seem to believe in so strongly. Maybe we would even be treated to the sight of Ron Paul arm wrestling Ted Cruz to see who gets to be the new Sam Houston.

There are enough sympathetic residents of the U.S. that the newly independent state would likely experience an influx of population that would raise its numbers, and those numbers would stay high when the government of Mexico builds a fence along the south bank of the Rio Grande to keep Texans in Texas. The Tea Party would finally have its Mecca, where the one party rule that they have been seeking would be within reach, and in an immeasurable benefit to those of their kind, they would not be in a position to have Obamacare inflicted upon their conscience, their souls, and most particularly, on their physical infirmities.

We must speculate that Texans would not miss the federal largesse that flows their way in terms of military bases, NASA facilities and the sundry courts, federal law enforcement, border patrol, park facilities, port and airport facilities and the like, expressing contempt for all things federal as they do. After all, they seem to think themselves possessed of such self-reliance that they may be expected to provide all of their needs for themselves from the raw, dry soil of the Texas landscape. Their needs are simple; as we see, with the state already becoming accustomed to repairing their deteriorating paved roads with dirt and gravel.

As an enhancement to our federal revenues, this nation would be able to impose a steep "citizenship duty" on those who grow disillusioned with the experiment in too much independence and wish to return to our constitutional democratic republic. It could conceivably be enough revenue to retire the national debt.