Burnell and like-minded believers are looking to encourage thousands of U.S. citizens to migrate to South Carolina, run for state office, and eventually prompt South Carolina to peacefully secede from the union to create a new country where “government derives its power from the consent of the governed.
I’m all for any form of secession from the US federal government – if nothing else, the inevitable reaction would likely prove my point about the Civil War – but this doesn’t seem like a particularly serious project to me at this point in time. The Free State project is far more well-organized; South Carolina is not a particularly good choice because it is simply too large for a small organization to make an impact.
Granted, there are many more Christians than libertarians in the country, but many if not most Christians are fat, lazy and content where they are. The Free State project already has 5,700 members; I’ll bet they’ll have 20,000 and start their move to New Hampshire long before Christian Exodus has the same number, assuming it ever does.
The problem is that Christianity and politics don’t tend to work very closely in sync, and for good reason. Those seeking liberty in the Free State know exactly what they want to do, whereas I’ll bet there is a much broader and less focused spectrum in the Christian Exodus. That being said, I wish both groups great success in their bold endeavor; certainly they offer more hope for changing the nation for the better than those devoted to the Sisyphean task of working within the Republican party.
The right of free association is the right to leave. I’m sure there will be some misguided “conservatives” who will oppose these efforts, but the truth is that no one who supports freedom and liberty can. This could be an interesting litmus test, down the road.