Opus 2022-019: Should-a-Beens: Renaming California

I am thinking that we need to rename the once golden state of California.  I am going to suggest “Coventry”.  This idea is presented by Robert Heinlein in a story of the same name.  If you have never read it you can find the entire text at Metallicman.

The basic thesis is that anyone convicted of a crime is sent to a place where they are free to live with nothing to guide them but their own desires and abilities.  That place is called Coventry.  It has been a long time since I read the story, I stopped reading Heinlein when he started pushing incest, so I will speak from memory.

Coventry is an area surrounded by an wall that cannot be breached and rigorously guarded.  There is only one gate but a lot of places where guards can dispatch anyone who tries to break out.  When you are ushered in the gate you are able to take any weapons or devices you want.  I assume that nuclear missiles were not allowed.  You were given a date on which you would be allowed to exit if you showed up at the gate.  Any other time that you came to the gate would be your last day for anything.

I am suggesting that we do that with California.  They have already declared that they want nothing to do with a republic that allows the liberties listed in the Bill of Rights.  They keep exporting their foolishness to the rest of us.  Let them have their way but make them keep it to themselves.

For Coventry there would be some immediate results.  Their electricity would soon go away because they don’t generate enough to run their A/C and Telsas and when the wall went up they would either be cut off from outside sources of forced to pay in gold for any imported.  The same would be for water and food.  They would soon run out of gold.

There would be long range results.  After the killing fields bring the population down to livable levels the war lords would institute all kinds of things from the past.  Slavery comes to mind as a possibility.

There would only be one gate.  I would suggest the desert to the west of Las Vegas.  The civilized, liberty loving Americans would escort all the miscreants that want to rule us without our consent to that gate and turn them loose.  I would suggest that we start by getting an agreement with the military to look the other way and round up all the people who have been working for the alphabet agencies and take them into custody.  It should not be too hard to separate the wheat from the chaff as they are gathered up.  They could be given different times to consider the errors of their ways in Coventry.  After we are done with them we could develop a committee to investigate the rulings of our judges.  This would be easy in some cases.  Check their bank accounts and such and find out who was bought off to rule a certain way.  Line up their decisions on one side with a copy of the Constitution on the other and see if they should stay in the land of the free and the home of the brave.  The hard cases would be those areas where they were within the letter of the law but ignored the spirit.  These we could treat with mercy.  The example of their despicable colleagues would be enough.

The beauty of this system would be that there is no capital punishment involved and you would require a much smaller budget to maintain it.  

It will never happen but a man can dream, can’t he.

homo unius libri