We’re already used to hearing about California wanting to secede from the nation as long as Trump is president, but in a different part of the west coast the opposite effect is setting in. It’s not the first time that it’s come up, but the more conservative, rural eastern portion of Washington State is hoping that Congress will let them split off from Seattle and the coastal area to become the nation’s 51st state.

Some conservative Eastern Washington lawmakers want to split the state in two, creating a new state east of the Cascade Range known as “Liberty.”

The idea is contained in House Joint Memorial 400, sponsored by Republican state Reps. Matt Shea and Bob McCaslin of Spokane Valley and David Taylor of Moxee.

The Spokesman-Review says the idea of splitting from liberal Western Washington has been proposed numerous times in past decades.

There have been movements in the past to take the inland region of the northwest and create a new state called Cascadia, but this is a bit different. This is just the more conservative leaning, rural inland areas wanting to rid themselves of the basically socialist mindset dominating the western half of Washington, particularly Seattle. And why wouldn’t they? If you’re not part of that liberal culture yourself, Seattle has to be something of an embarrassment. Keep in mind that this is the same place that began issuing “Democracy Vouchers” recently, declared homelessness to be a civil right and is currently offering taxpayer subsidized “white fragility classes.”

I saw the link to this story at an outlet called Liberty Hangout, where they clearly feel that this initiative could be an important stepping stone in the secession movement.

If the bill succeeds, this would be an important domino for the secession movement, and help inspire other disaffected communities across the nation to secede. As governments decentralize, power is restored to the individual, and communities can appropriately govern themselves as they see fit, without outside influences. As even our founders recognized, the government which is closest to home is easiest to control.

Should the bill fail, communities ought to learn from their efforts and push forward with their own secession movements anyway. For if their voices are not being heard in the federal and state governments anyway, then what do they have to lose? They only have everything to gain.

I’m not sure this is really “secession” in the classic and more commonly used sense of the word so much as splitting. Seceding from the union entirely is more of an act of war, whereas trying to become the 51st state is just a call for independence from your current state legislature. Upstate New York has had people pushing for the same idea for decades now. We’ve seen similar movements in Texas (who probably has the best constitutional argument in terms of having the right to do it) and the non-Calexit Californians who want to split the Golden State into anywhere from two to five new entities.

Unfortunately, approval to break off a chunk of a state this way is a rare thing. I’m pretty sure the last one to manage the feat was West Virginia and that was probably only allowed because they were taking an opposite position in the Civil War. But I’ll still wish the best of luck to the new state of Liberty if they manage it. Perhaps your first move could be to outlaw Starbucks and their terrible, burnt tasting coffee. I’m sure a lot of us would be grateful for that.