Douglas Todd > Quotes

“Cascadia has never had a dominant religious reference group. Historically no group has ever gained the political, religious or cultural traction to be “the” established religion in Oregon and Washington. In British Columbia neither the Catholic, Anglican nor United Church of Canada denominations succeeded in overcoming the disinterest in institutional religion of most people in the province (Burkinshaw).”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“Virtually from its declaration of independence from Britain in 1776, the United States was ambitious to acquire more territory.”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“So radical was Washington State’s political tradition that it led Jim Farley, the Democratic National Chairman in the 1930s, to coin his famous quip about “the forty-seven states and the Soviet of Washington.”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“The East-West divide of the Cascade Curtain has long been Washington’s homegrown version of the red state–blue state divide that is the current darling of the national punditry. The East looks to the West, and sees arrogant urban liberals; the West thinks of its neighbours to the East as dim-witted rural conservatives. From time to time, a handful of legislators and citizens seriously propose splitting the state in two” (de Place).”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“A greater sense of do-it-yourself (DIY) politics is exposed by the fact Cascadians are more likely to disagree that “voting is the only way people like me can have a say about how the government runs things” (54 percent disagree versus 37 percent, RoNA).”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“Secondly, I believe the pieces of the puzzle fit together to describe a people who tend to be more individualistic, with a do-it-myself mentality. Cascadians are, for example, less trusting of religious organizations, and place higher value on their own personal religious or spiritual beliefs. Cascadians think that they can make a difference in politics — outside of voting.”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“Firstly, we see that Cascadians are definitely different from the others with whom they share this continent. In a number of fundamental and interrelated ways, Cascadia can be considered to have a distinct culture.”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“The history of the American civil religion is a history of the conviction that the American people are God’s New Israel, his newly chosen people. The belief that America has been elected by God for a special destiny in the world has been the focus of American sacred ceremonies, the inaugural addresses of our presidents, the sacred scriptures of the civil religion. It has been so pervasive a motif in the national life that the word ‘belief’ does not really capture the dynamic role that it has played for the American people, for it passed into the ‘realm of motivational myths’“ (Cherry, 129).”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“Cascadia is, after all, a place of the heart as much as it is a specific landscape. No one really agrees what its physical borders are. Is it a bioregion? Is it a repressed nation defined by state and provincial borders that strains to free itself from the smothering clutches of the imperialist US of A and Canada? Are its borders defined by the tectonic plates of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, or the spawning grounds of the enigmatic Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus?”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“Andrew Grenville’s tailored polling reveals Cascadians tend to be less trusting of religion and more tolerant of marijuana (see above) and homosexual relationships than others across the continent. Even though Cascadians’ individualism could harm their chances of building strong communities, Grenville believes that their live-and-let-live attitude, optimism and self-responsibility could create a culture that serves as a beacon to the planet.”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“Cascadians are less likely to believe that “the world will end in the battle of Armageddon between Jesus and the Antichrist” (29 percent versus 43 percent, RoNA).”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia

“Cascadia was able to exist for so long as a single entity because no nation cared enough to take control of this distant corner of North America. Even though four countries — Russia, Spain, Britain and the United States — explored the Pacific Northwest’s coastline, none claimed exclusive sovereignty over the land mass lying behind it.”
― Douglas Todd, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia