Floridians Are Better Off Without Them

Many Floridians are rightfully anxious about the 2022 elections.  On the line is the future of Ron DeSantis, whom despite taking a picture at “The Wall” with a yarmulke, has done an extraordinary job as the leader of the state.  I judge a man by those with whom he surrounds himself, the fruits of his labor, and those who hate him. I know the political proclivities of more than a few of those who are in his governing circle.  His policies have been unabashedly pro-Florida, resisting leftwing extremist Covid lockdowns and transgender education in elementary schools.  As it pertains to his enemies, they include the homosexual propaganda mill, Disney, the anti-Christian hate group, Anti-Defamation League, and mothers who want their boys to become girls in order to satisfy their Munchausen narcissism.  His enemies are my enemies.

That stated, there is another facet of 2022 that is also leading Floridians toward a special sense of zeal related to the upcoming elections.  Thanks to a population increase that is outpacing nearly every other country within these United States (currently 7^th), Florida increased its Congressional representation by two additional seats.  Furthermore, thanks to the machinations of DeSantis, Congressional realignment ensures at least three less Democrats, two of which were black districts.  Despite kvetching from the Left regarding bias, the new Congressional map was upheld in court.  DeSantis had to fight his own party to get a map in place that would never have faced internal resistance if it were reversed, as we saw with California’s redistricting by Democrats.

However, nice as it may be that the Republicans may gain as many as six new Congressional members thanks to DeSantis and Florida, I have a different perspective.  Pathetically weak national Republicans do not deserve more conservative Florida Congressmen.  There is no fixing that broken party in a broken system.  Investing in more federal power has done absolutely nothing for Florida or Floridians.  We are a separate people, in a separate country, with separate needs, and a separate culture.  Floridians are not like the rest of those other United States. 

Too terrified to anger big business, Republicans in those United States sat aimlessly-by while their little children were taught homosexual sex in kindergarten.  We stopped that horrific practice in our country.  While Republicans feared the media’s backlash surrounding a bad flu, Floridians enjoyed freedom from Covidian oppression and sent their children to reopened schools – much to the consternation of Randi Weingarten.  Most recently, Florida finally moved to ban “gender affirming treatment” for confused little children.  While those Republicans empowered the exploitation of a lost generation, ours fought back.  How dare they ask us to come save them?  More importantly, why should we even work within their system at all?

What does it benefit Florida to be led by New Yorkers and Californians? Think about it. The Senate is led by a New Yorker. The tie breaker – the Vice President – is a Californian. The Speaker of the House is a Californian. Her opposition – the Republican Minority Leader – is a Californian. The Senate Minority Leader is from Kentucky, but he has spent more of his life in Washington, DC. 

To date, despite being the third most populated state, Florida has never enjoyed a President. Our current President hails from Delaware. The previous president, New York. Prior to him, Illinois. Where are Florida’s interests being met at a federal level?

Unlike the California-New York led United States, we have a balanced budget, a budget surplus, Triple-A credit, and no income tax. Unlike the California-New York led United States, Florida is a net-exporter.  Unlike the California-New York led United States, we do not need them, they need us.  Florida residents pay more into federal revenues than we receive back.  The top states to send military volunteers proportionate to their population were (in order, data 2020): Hawaii, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Florida.  Given that Florida’s population nearly equaled the other four states combined (estimated Florida 22 million vs four states at 25 million), our proportional representation means more in sheer manpower to the American war machine.

Cumulatively, Floridians reside in a union led by those who take from us and do not give back.  What is the purpose of staying within such a union?  This is not what our Floridian forebearers wanted for Florida.

Historically, Floridians are the descendants of those who carved out a path unique to North America.  As a Spanish outpost, it was an oft forgotten vestige of Iberian power, enabling it to build a unique culture divorced from Madrid.  By the time of Andrew Jackson’s invasion into Florida to suppress incursions into Southern Georgia and Alabama, the Spanish were a nominal landlord, incapable of managing the Seminoles, pirates, cattle rustlers, and outlaws who occupied the nearly impenetrable sub-tropical geography.  Ours was a fiercely independent culture from birth.

Later, when the U.S. government secured the territory from Spain, Floridians continued to do business in Spanish gold bullion instead of American dollars, saving them from the deprivations of the Panic of 1837 that led to the deaths of more than a million fellow Southerners from 1837-1842.  Our native tribe, the Seminole, never signed a peace treaty with the United States government.  When Florida became the third state to secede, various attempts to stop the breadbasket of the South failed – from Palatka to Olustee.  Yankees in wool never fared so well in our glorious heat.  They remained confined to the coast, irrelevant throughout the war, thanks to men like Ocala’s own Captain John Jackson Dickison, the Confederate Swamp Fox.  So determined were our people, that Florida-born general, Edmund Kirby Smith, would be the last Confederate general to surrender, eight weeks after Robert E. Lee.

Since well before the first Cracka’s crossed the St. Mary’s River, Florida has been a refuge for those who sought to rid themselves of an oppressor’s yoke.  Countless pirates exploited the Spanish, Portuguese, and French utilization of the gulfstream to make themselves rich.   They would hide in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  At the turn of the 20^th Century, Baker County, Florida, had so many criminals that it was considered impossible to regulate.  If an escaped convict or a fugitive could survive the Okefenokee Swamp and into Baker County, he was free.  Ma Barker’s gang chose Lake Weir to hide from the law.  They were found in a home owned by “Gator Joe,” a man known for hating law enforcement and banks – which the gang had hit many of each.  Thousands of Cubans found refuge from communism on Florida’s soil, ironically in Florida communist Claude “Red” Pepper’s Congressional district.  Florida is a country of rebels, who do not follow the rules of others and certainly do not easily submit to oppression.

Thus, it is a wonder why we remain in this union at all.  Florida has nothing in common with Oregon, Illinois, Massachusetts, or Washington – none of them.  We do not accept their cultural or political narratives.  We do not abide by their spendthrift ways.  They demean us with little quips about “Florida Man,” while secretly envying that which they could never be: a robust people who do not fear risk.

What is assured, however, is that there is no risk in leaving the rest of those United States.  We are in better shape than they are.  We have asserted ourselves in ways that the watery version of conservatism has failed to achieve.  We do not benefit in a union managed by New Yorkers and Californians.  Now is the time to leave.  Without the feds in Florida, maybe we can count another refugee as our newest protected resident of a free Florida, Donald Trump.  I can guarantee you, an independent Florida would not abide a raid conducted on dubious grounds by an ungovernable federal bureau of Marxist miscreants.