Posted by
Jay Noble on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 12:52:44 PM
The San Francisco Board of Education has voted to discontinue junior ROTC classes in the San Francisco Public School in protest of the military "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy regarding homosexual servicemen and to protect school children from the baneful consequences of militarism. This follows last year’s decision of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to spurn permanently docking the U.S.S. Iowa along the city’s waterfront as a museum, partly resulting from one supervisor observing that he hadn’t been proud of anything the U.S. military had done since the 1940's.
It’s clear that the elected leadership of San Francisco, who presumably represent the feelings of the populace, want nothing to do with the rest of the country. In their opinion the natives living eastward beyond the Bay (at least extending to Hudson River) are all warmongering, bloodthirsty, racist, sexist, homophobic bigots, a collection of rubes deceived by Bible thumpers and nationalistic propaganda.
There is no point debating these cosmopolitan sophisticates of San Francisco. Facts and logic have no place in the Liberal world view that has captured the minds of the citizens of the "City by the Bay." This is, after all, Nancy Pelosi’s home turf, a city more worried that its children will be more damaged from exposure to U.S. military through ROTC or an old battleship than a trip through ground zero of Gay America, the city’s Castro District. These are, indeed, San Francisco "values," and they are irreconcilable with the values of the vast majority of Americans.
There being such a wide gulf between the views of San Franciscans and the rest of the United States, with one so clearly contemptuous of the other, I propose a divorce. The City and County of San Francisco are coterminous and being situated at the upper end of the peninsula, could easily become its own, separate legal entity, somewhat like Monte Carlo or as Hong Kong once was. There is no reason the people of San Francisco such suffer the indignity of being associated with the United States, and vice versa. San Francisco should become a free city.
Of course, this would mean no more state of federal tax dollars would flow to the city, either directly or in the form of transfer payments to the residents, including social security. The United States would have no obligation to defend the city or assist it when the next big earthquake levels the place. San Franciscans would no longer pay state or federal taxes of any kind. The city should have no problem making alliance with like-minded governments, liberal governments, like China or maybe France. Who knows, European tourists might find the place even more attractive if it were no longer part of the United States. Being a city of progressives, no good San Francisco resident would object to increasing the tax burden to make the city self-sufficient.
There is much to gain and little to lose from San Francisco becoming a free city. Each side would no longer be embarrassed by the antics of the other. San Francisco would be free of the constraints that state and federal law now impose on its progressive instincts. The United States would be free of a city of fruits and nuts. Truthfully, would anyone outside of California really miss San Francisco? Would anyone in San Francisco miss the United States?