The Road to Cascadiarnby Justin RaimondornThey call it Cascadia—a land of plunging waterfalls andrnsnowcapped mountains, a mythical kingdom of toweringrntrees and raging rivers. Here in Seattle, capital of this Arcadia,rnthe sleekly modernistic Space Needle rises up against the backdroprnof Mount Rainier, which dominates the horizon—arndistinctly Cascadian juxtaposition of mountain and citvscape,rnforest and skyscraper, greenery and growth.rnThe name adorns hundreds of local businesses—from CascadiarnSoftware to Cascade Steel Door and Hardware—and wasrninevitably appropriated by radical environmentalists—such asrnthe “Cascadia Action Group,” an Earth First!-type organizationrnbitterly opposed to any and all development—as well as byrnmore sedate “bioregionalists,” such as admirers of Ernest Callenbach’srnEcotopia, who peddle socialism under the aegis of regionalrnplanning, hi a review of Robert L. Dorman’s Revolt ofrnthe Provinces: The Regionalist Movement in America, 1920-rn1945, the bioregionalist writer Patrick Mazza asks us to “envisionrnnew cultural institutions meshing the knowledge gainedrnthrough natural sciences with theater, ritual, narrative and music,rnrecalling earlier native, folk and immigrant cultures whilernrecognizing some fundamentally new synthesis is needed.” Politically,rnthis means “nothing less than creating new political institutionsrnrooted in community and region, that work confederallyrnwith their allies in other regions.”rnIf all this sounds like an MTV rock video, the “ritual” thatrnMazza mentions is meant to be taken literal^. For the fact isrnthat a self-styled “neopagan” subculture has emerged here, asrnin the wackier regions of northern California. But there isrnJustin Raimondo is a senior fellow at the Center for LibertarianrnStudies and the author o/^Reclaiming the American Right:rnThe Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.rnsomething more substantial in the vision of Cascadia than thernwoozy utopianism of these marginal folk. Bevond the subsidizedrnplaypens of academia and the “alternative” culture, thernidea of Cascadia has caught on in certain elite circles. WhilernSeattle’s pierced-and-tattooed left-Cascadians are culturallyrnchic but politicall)’ irrelevant, the quasi-conservative or right-rnCascadians are in a position actually to implement their agendarn—which is not separatism but de facto union with BritishrnColumbia, Alberta, the Yukon, and perhaps other provinces ofrnCanada.rnThis scenario was vividly and convincingly described in arn1994 book. Breakup: The Coming End of Canada and the Stakesrnfor America, whose author, Lansing Lamont, was Time magazine’srnchief Canadian correspondent in the 1970’s and a managingrndirector for Canadian Affairs at the Americas Society. Asrnone might expect from a descendant of Thomas W. Lamont—rnMorgan partner, New York investment banker, and a pillar ofrnthe power elite—his is a cultured voice, resonant with a patricianrnself-assurance: the authentic voice of that legendary creature,rnthe Eastern Establishment. His book, which reads like anrninternal policy memorandum written in the form of a futurernhistorv, raises the Cascadian Question in the following context;rnQuebec nationalists declare independence, after which therndemise of Canada, “the first international nation,” followsrnswiftly. “As for British Columbia, aloof on the other side of thernRockies,” writes Lamont, “it pondered a private agenda of itsrnown. Its west was the Pacific Rim and the Oregon coast, not Albertarnor Manitoba; its future lay in Tokyo and Seattle, not Calgaryrnor Winnipeg.” Having “recast itself from a prairie to arnnorthwest mountain province and elected to take its chancesrnfor the long term in a distinctly American-edged coalition,” Albertarntakes the same road. The Western provinces follow Que-rn24/CHRONICLESrnrnrn