By Stephen Smoot
At the dawn of the history of the Republic, America’s leading lights gathered in Philadelphia to create a structure of government. It would reflect the practical needs of the nation, states, and people while also forging a balance to prevent it from growing too powerful.
James Madison brought a plan referred to as “the Virginia Plan.” His proposed structure was, for the most part, what the Constitution would follow except that it proposed to divide the legislative weight according to state size. It was countered with the New Jersey Plan that favored small states with a proposed single house legislature that gave the same number of votes to all states.
The Convention wisely adopted the best of both plans to create the intended balance of power and sovereignty between the federal government, the states, and the people. Madison had famously warned against the “tyranny of the majority.” This referred to the ability of governments based solely on majority rule to most effectively tyrannize over a minority of people.
He saw that as even more dangerous than absolute monarchy or dictatorship. Aristotle called such a governmental system mob rule.
Former CIA officer and current Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has a different Virginia Plan. That plan seeks to effectively colonize areas of the Commonwealth outside of NOVA and the Richmond area by adopting the core-periphery structure in Virginia elections and social constructs.
In essence, subjugating the “common” to the “wealth.”
Appalachian historian John Alexander Williams from Appalachian State University wrote that the core-periphery model explained the conditions of Appalachian areas after decades of activity from the private, non profit, and government sectors. He described the relationship as the “periphery,” remote and rural areas, losing their power and agency to the “core,” the powerful urban areas that control business and governmental development.
To be sure, Williams saw the core-periphery model as highly destructive to the periphery to the benefit of the core.
The most basic way to augment the core at the expense of the periphery is to destroy their voice in how they are governed. Virginia Democrats are spinning such a web to ensnare most of their Commonwealth in Democrat guaranteed districts.
This is done by creating a large “anchor” of Democrat base voters, then attaching a “tail” of red counties whose populations will never overtake those of the blue areas. This will render them permanently subordinate to the Democrat base.
The likely desire of the redistricting, plus raising taxes sky high even as their government runs a surplus is clear. Republicans can either move to West Virginia, Tennessee, or other friendly environments or deal quietly with the Orwellian vision of the national Democrat Party. Maryland Democrats have done this before in 2010 when they sank the Republican voting districts in their western Panhandle into the population anchor of DC proximate Montgomery County. At the same time, they work to block Republican states doing the same thing with obsolete laws and policies.
What Democrats intend with Virginia is what they intend with the nation. With President Donald Trump the first figure to work to disrupt the dynamic, the powers in places like Virginia simply took the fig leaves off the plans and now pursue them in the open.
In the short-term, disastrous Democratic Party policies in Virginia directly benefit West Virginia. The Mountain State gets an influx of productive conservatives who will bring benefit wherever they land. Marylanders have been steadily moving their families and businesses into West Virginia now for over a decade. Virginia will likely soon follow if they succeed in permanently blocking Republicans from congressional and other offices through these dirty tricks.
Once, however, Virginia loses enough Republicans, they become a Democrat run state. With that party’s track record in administration of pretty much any major city in the nation, Virginia’s long-term prospects do not look good on any level. Their Leftists will pursue their bizarre social priorities as strongly as their economy killing taxes and regulations.
A Virginia in decline is bad for the nation, not just residents of the Old Dominion.
Virginia has a chance to avoid this state of affairs by voting down the redistricting proposal. Democrats, again in Orwellian fashion, call it promoting “fair” elections. The obvious intent to all is disenfranchising large sections of the Commonwealth who do not favor the agenda or the priorities of Northern Virginia Leftists.
But if they don’t get out and vote down the Democrats’ plan of making the core-periphery model the new Virginia Plan, that is exactly what they will get. At that point, each red county’s only hope would be secession, then merger with West Virginia or Tennessee.
