The revelation that Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband Todd was a member of the Alaska Independence Party has raised eyebrows and given critics a way to challenge her patriotism.

But session movements run deep into American political thought. I lived for years in northern Wisconsin where a movement to form a new state of Superior from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the northern half of Wisconsin sprang up in the 1970s. Vermont has a secessionist movement and many people in northern Idaho still refer to the region as North Idaho, a subtle reference to the idea that it be part of a separate state.

The Alaskan Independence Party, the third largest party in the state, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede.

A mostly Canadian movement proposes British Columbia, Alaska, the Yukon, Washington, Oregon and sometimes Idaho secedes from their two countries and form a new country, Cascadia. Even some business people think this makes sense. Cascadia would have a population of more than 15 million people and generates more than $450 billion worth of goods and services annually, the dreamers say, which would place it in the top 20 economies of the world.

My own introduction to the idea came in 1975 when I read Ernest Callenbach’s best-seller called "Ecotopia," which told of a Pacific Northwest nation that seceded from the United States. He envisioned an independent Northwest where people practiced ecosystem management, lived in harmony with the land and with each other.

Ritualistic war games replaced sports and kept the population prepared for possible attack from the United States. Blacks lived in separatist city states, located in the major cities, leaving the region mostly lily-white.

Ecotopia was a 1970s liberal's paradise. Women held the balance of power, the economy was organized to produce a stable-state instead of growth. Competition was discouraged. Government, while decentralized, still played a positive role in Ecotopians’ lives.

By 1995, Callenbach's Ecotopia dream had partially come true as whites flocked to the area to get away from California riots, earthquakes and the influx of Hispanics. Idaho in particular had gained a reputation as a sanctuary for white supremacists.

Idaho's back-to-the-land movement in the 1990s was a mirror-image of Callenbach's environmental fantasyland. It had the racial characteristics, the distrust of Washington and the xenophobic isolationism Ecotopia displayed, without the ecological enlightenment nor the shared sense of communal responsibility that laid the basis for his mythical land. Only to some it had become a nightmare.

Helen Chenoweth, the feisty conservative congressman of the time thrived in Ecotopia’s alternative reality. It’s not surprising that Palin, who shares much of Chenoweth’s politics, and many Alaskans would be attracted to a party that rejects decisions from thousands of miles away.

I’m skeptical that Democrats will be able to make much hay about this revelation among the conservative Republicans that Palin is attracting to the McCain ticket. It’s naïve to think that secessionist leanings will hurt her in the South or in the small rural towns of America where residents regularly complain about decisions made far away…like in the Great State of Ada.