There has been a lot of talk lately about making Washington, D.C. our 51st state. Most of the opinions regarding this have been sharply divided along partisan lines with Democrats siding with D.C. statehood and Republicans against it. Many Republicans have made strong arguments against statehood, such as they don’t have any airports or car dealerships, the people aren’t “well rounded” enough (maybe this is what he means?), or that they already have lawmakers’ ears in other ways. I think that we should respect these Republican positions and work to find a more bipartisan way to fix this issue.
I certainly don’t think we should be adding any more states, most importantly because it would be a huge slap in the face to Betsy Ross, the inventor of the flag. Ever heard of her? She singlehandedly won the Cola wars for us, asking nothing in return except to never go beyond 50 states. I, for one, am not going to trample on that brave woman’s grave, which we probably built a freeway on. She’s not here to make us another flag, and besides where would you even put another star? You can’t just take out a sharpie and draw it wherever you want.
Besides there is absolutely no need to add a 51st state when there are other more creative solutions to this problem. Do we really need two Dakotas? I’ve heard D.C. is too small to become a state even though it wouldn’t even be our smallest state. Both Vermont and Wyoming are smaller in population than Washington, D.C. and Alaska and North Dakota have similar sized populations.
I think it’s time for our crazy odd couple of North and South Dakota to patch things up and move back in together. I know, I know, North never helps with the laundry and South never listens, I mean really listens, but they were made for each other. And for the good of the country they need to give it a shot. Besides they both know no one else will have them. That puts us down to 49 states and Washington, D.C. can bump it back up to 50.
But this has me thinking, why stop there? I mean if we’re busting out the old map making pen, let’s really get into it. Long before I ever heard about Washington, D.C. becoming a state I remember Puerto Rico wanting in on the action. And yes it always comes back to “where the hell are you going find an extra star?” And I know Puerto Ricans might tell you that they already have one star on their flag and they would happily give that to us to officially join the Union. But I think there is a better way to make Republicans happy. Since they have been talking so much about certain states being too small, why not take the smallest state, Wyoming, and have them join their compadres in a United Dakota state for the most amazing throuple ever? Now that paves the way for Puerto Rico to join as our 50th state. 50 states kind of has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
I also want to address some other Republican concerns on the issue of redrawing some of the map. I’ve heard so many wax poetic about how our founders put in place the Electoral College to protect small rural states from the evil big states and massive cities that didn’t even exist yet. I mean I could’ve sworn it was 100% because of slavery but I’ve been wrong before.
I too am worried about ever massively growing states seeming to suck all the power away from all the small towns in “real” America. The biggest one of all, California, is doing most of the damage.
It’s well past time to stop this one state from having too much power and controlling America like Chairman Pelosi wants. We need to break up California into three smaller states with much less power. Having Northern California, California and Southern California would be the only way of returning power back to the heartland. But unfortunately, that would put us at 52 states which is an affront to Lady Liberty, and not something I could stand for.
I fear for our educational system mostly. We may take it for granted but in some of our most southern states, such as Mississippi and Arkansas, most students are barely able to count to 50. And I’m afraid having 52 states would raise the counting requirements and their fragile education systems may not be able to handle such a strain. The only humane thing to do is to ask Idaho and Montana to join this super Dakota state to bring the number back down to 50.
With the new makeup of states this should also help to solve some of the inequities in the U.S. Senate. Having two Senators from every state may sound good on paper until you realize that states with less than a million people have the same voice as 40 million in another state. The end result is that you have minority rule in the Senate. A minority of the country gets the majority of control because these snowflake conservatives want everyone to be equal and receive a participation trophy senate seat. This leaves you with a state like Wyoming where you have roughly one senate seat per 288,000 people and California which has one senate seat per 20 million people. This doesn’t represent the country at all, and leaves some of the smaller western states having a completely outsized voice and the ability to silence what people in the country actually want. Under this map proposal, the current make-up of the Senate would change from 50-50 to 57-43 with a Democratic majority.
Now that still leaves the U.S. with four territories left in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgins Islands. I’m not sure how these residents feel about their territorial status, if they would prefer to be their own sovereign countries or remain affiliated with the U.S. in some form. These four territories have populations way smaller than any state so it might make more sense to add them to another state or to combine them as one Island state. The three located in the Pacific could become part of Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands could become part of Puerto Rico. If all four were to be combined into U.S.I. (United States Islands) we would again have the problem of a 51st state.
Under a situation where these four territories were interested in a combined statehood bid, I guess we could just give the mega-combined Dakota state to Canada and they could become part of Alberta. Canada could replace Mt. Rushmore with a Beaver, Maple Syrup, Celine Deon, and Youppi, just as the founders intended.
