Back to France…
By Michael Berube has a damn fine idea. While everyone in Blue America is now regretting Civil War, Berube would have us look at the Louisiana Purchase.
And while everyone’s been obsessing about the land of Dixie and its peculiar institutions, the good people living on this windswept, culturally barren swath of land have been dragging the country to the right, to the right, to the right, and right off the cliff. It’s time to cut them loose.
Haven’t you ever read the text of the Louisiana Purchase? The final sentence of the document reads, “Done at Paris the tenth day of Floreal in the eleventh year of the French Republic; and the 30th of April 1803.” Don’t you see? There is no month of Floreal. That was a reference to some weird-ass, short-lived “French Revolution” calendar that doesn’t exist anymore, full of dates like “le dix-huitième Brumaire” and “le vingtième Fromage.” That contract isn’t binding, any more than your lease would be if it said you had to pay the rent on the thirty-ninth day of each month. “Eleventh year of the French Republic,” indeed. It might as well say “Year Zed in Organic Time.”
Thus, when we void the Purchase and return the territory to France, all those red-state voters will become French citizens, and the fair cities of Baton Rouge, Pierre, Des Moines and Cape Girardeau will– at long last– be repatriated. Of course, we’ll have to ask for our $15,000,000 back, prorated for inflation since 1803 (or “year eleven,” ha ha ha). I suggest we set a reasonable price of $10,000 per acre, which brings the total cost to $5,299,116,800,000, or enough to reduce the federal deficit by almost 75 percent, knocking it down under the $2 trillion mark.