…and so grab your gun, run for the hills, and hole upwardly in a correct-wing paranoid paradise, consummate with mail-Waco lifestyle civilities like condos, media centers, and arms factories.

The secessionist motion may have peaked, what with the White House last week rejecting petitions from viii states to leave the union. But just in fourth dimension comes give-and-take of ii new planned communities that offer a kind of internal secession: You'd become to retain your citizenship and the benefits it confers (like the right to chant "USA! USA!"), only you could at least feel free from liberals, socialists and other vermin as you lot defiantly stand up your ground with like-minded folks who fearfulness the thumb of the feds.

The about radical of these far-correct utopias, each still in the planning stage, is the Citadel, a gated (and turreted) community strictly for "Patriots" with a survivalistic bent. The Citadel is "a martial attempt designed to protect Residents in times of peril (natural or homo-made)," according to its website, iiicitadel.com. "If Liberty has been missing from the life of your family," the sales pitch tempts, "consider the Citadel for your new dwelling."

Funded by a gun manufacturer, III Arms Visitor in West Virginia, the Citadel has purchased twenty acres on a mountaintop in Idaho and hopes to expand to at least two,000 acres in the Obama-resistant "American Redoubt." Thousands of families would alive inside its defensible walls and towers, and each tower, in fact, "will firm condos." The Citadel, not to be confused with the military higher in Southward Carolina, would include a fortified castle, a firearms museum and "a modern firearms visitor that would employ residents." Although "all of the company's profits would be donated to the Citadel," none dare call it a commune.

Indeed, the site warns: "Marxists, Socialists, Liberals and Institution Republicans may find that living inside our Citadel Community is incompatible with their existing ideology and preferred lifestyles."

Being white and Christian is not a requirement for Citadelians, but packing heat is. The Idaho Statesman writes that residents would have to agree to conditions such as:

— Being able to shoot a man-sized steel target at diverse distances with a handgun and a rifle….

— Keeping on hand an AR-15 semi-automated rifle variant, at least five magazines, 1,000 rounds of ammunition and other supplies….

— Being armed with a loaded sidearm whenever visiting the Citadel's boondocks center.

The FAQ folio handles whatsoever funny feelings you may have, like: "Are You lot a Bunch of Wackos/Cultists/Racists… etc.?" ("Actually, quite the opposite," it answers) and "Won't The Federal Government or Military Simply Blow Up Your Town?"

Why would they? We are a law-abiding group of people minding our own business. We are conducting our affairs in an open and transparent manner. The Citadel Community is designed to be a prophylactic oasis and a major tourist destination. The Us Government does non make a habit of bravado upwards law constant citizens and tourists on American soil.

Glenn Beck seems to think otherwise. In introducing his planned, $2 billion "city-theme park hybrid," chosen Independence USA, he explained why he's going big, actually big: "I believe that if we're ever going to build something like this, I believe it needs to leave the message, 'You will literally have to wipe us off the face of the globe and wipe us off the map before you can erase the truth that is America.' "

The most probable setting for the apocalyptical city-state of Beckistan is Texas, the heart of the secession move (the nearly 126,000 signatures on its petition to secede far outnumber those of other states). Like the Citadel, Independence would aim to exist cocky-sufficient, providing its own food and energy, merely its object of worship is less the gun than the utterly unfettered costless market. (Though not really: no Gaps or Ann Taylors allowed, and cars—cars!—will be banned in some areas.)

The architectural love child of Walt Disney and Ayn Rand, Beck's dream is based on "Galt'southward Gulch," the customs inspired by John Galt, backer superhero of Rand'southward novel Atlas Shrugged. The libertarian mecca, entered through an Ellis Isle–similar gate, would include a ranch, a media eye (from which Beck would run his communications/agit-prop empire), a multidenominational church "modeled on the Alamo," and the Marketplace, where "owners and tradesmen could concur apprenticeships and teach immature people the skills and entrepreneurial spirit that has been lost in today's entitlement state."

"At the center—in the eye of the lake that is itself larger than all of Disney Land," Rightwing Sentinel writes, "Beck (with the help of [Christian nationalist pseudo-historian] David Barton) will create a massive 'national archive'/learning heart where people can send their children to exist 'deprogrammed' and elected officials can come to learn 'the truth.' "

In that location are, of form, bottom forms of internal secession: shutting down the government, impeaching the president for unimpeachable offenses, states arresting federal officers in pursuit of their duties, and the whole Tenther motility itself.

But only by retreating into a well-regulated correct-wing community tin you achieve the adjacent all-time thing to true secession: a state within a state-of-mind.