Secession solves none of America’s problems. It will only accelerate the processes of moral decadence and national destruction. Only the arduous fight for a return to God and a moral order will provide the way out of the present crisis for all Americans.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for a “national divorce” between red and blue states in thrice-repeated statements. Her appeal for an “amicable separation” has provoked much discussion about the sorry state of the national union.
It sounds very simple. There truly are irreconcilable differences between liberals and conservatives on issues like procured abortion, gun control, the LGBTQ+ agenda, illegal immigration and other hot-button issues. Indeed, Americans cannot even agree on gas stoves, pronouns and bathrooms. Rather than engage in a civil war over who is right or wrong, the Georgia firebrand congresswoman is suggesting that states simply walk away with no hard feelings.
The recently divorced Rep. Greene even insists that the divorce is not about “ending our union” – which is what any divorce does. Her inflammatory rhetoric only adds to the confusion. On one hand, she calls for separation that looks like secession in all but name. On the other hand, she claims the separated parties can cooperate on more technical matters as long as each meets the other on its side of the red/blue divide.
Public Sentiment for Secession
The secession option is apparently popular. A July 2021 poll by The Hill reports increasing support for secession among every partisan group. Some 37% of all polled indicated a “willingness to secede.” Sixty-six percent of Republicans in the South favor the proposition.
The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics conducted a similar survey in 2021. It found sentiments for separation on both the left and the right. Some 52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters in the 2020 election answered that they “somewhat agreed” when asked if it is time to divide the country in two.
They find the union to be increasingly unbearable. Rep. Greene rightly complains that many Americans are “sick and tired and fed up of being bullied by the left, abused by the left, and disrespected by the left.” However, a national no-fault divorce settlement fails to consider three important factors.
Leaving Problems Behind
The first factor is that such walk-away solutions do not solve the problems but merely try to escape from them. Moreover, the problems only tend to accumulate.
Columnist David Brooks cites philosopher George Santayana (1862–1952) as saying that “Americans don’t solve problems, they leave them behind. If there’s an idea they don’t like, they don’t bother refuting it, they simply talk about something else, and the original idea dies from inattention. If a situation bothers them, they leave it in the past.”
Rep. Greene’s call for a national divorce has something of this walking away from problems in the hope they might disappear. It holds the optimistic promise of all divorces that the next place or partner will have no problems. Like a Hollywood happy ending, everything will come out well on the other side of the divide.
Things seldom turn out as they do in the movies. Indeed, the relentless forces driving the culture on both sides of the divide no longer allow this walk-away. The one thing that characterizes the culture war is a stubborn refusal of ideas to die or be left in the past. These aggressive cultural forces will continue to exist and act no matter where one lives. The most likely result of the national divorce will be another national divorce down the line.
Inextricable
The second problem is inextricability. The simple division of America into red and blue states will not resolve the irreconcilable differences. Partisans of both red and blue positions are inextricably intermingled. While Texas went red in the last presidential election, its major cities are massive blue enclaves. The existence of contrary yet significant minorities in all states will continue and lead to further break-ups on an increasingly local scale. The divorce might later expand to include red and blue counties seceding from their state, cities seceding from their county, neighborhoods from their city, or even households from their neighborhood.
Like the Gospel parable of the wheat and the weeds mixed in the field, red and blue areas are found together everywhere. A national divorce would not resolve the plight of the purple patches that populate the map. Not following Our Lord’s wise Gospel counsel will result in uprooting everything, bringing all to ruin.
This divorce could represent not a split into two near-equal parts but a splintering of America into thousands of independent fragments, each walking away and deciding how it wants to live outside the union.
This disunion guts the nation’s security, making America vulnerable and inviting the attack of its enemies.
Return to Order
However, the most important reason secession is not the answer is that it fails to address the moral cause of this crisis. America is divided because it has adopted immoral, permissive, and sinful ways that have destructive consequences everywhere.
The secessionists treat such disputes as if they are mere differences of opinion. Some think it proper to do whatever they want, even if it destroys the nation’s moral fiber and makes it an unbearable place to live. Others choose to live more ordered lives that lead to greater personal happiness.
The selfish attitude of secession denies life’s moral dimension. There is no desire for what is best for the nation but only that which facilitates one’s self-interest. There is no concern about helping those Americans who have taken the wrong way. Indeed Rep. Greene believes the left should “live in their own filth they have created without us, then they will be able to realize the error of their ways.”
Addressing Causes
The solution is to look at the causes of decadence infecting both sides of the divide in different intensities and speeds. Dividing the nation between partisans of two stages of decadence will do no good since the decay processes will continue in all and will only worsen with time.
The causes of decadence are simple and recognizable. They are found everywhere. Americans are divided and decadent because they have lost the moral compass that defines right and wrong. Families are broken because the passions are unbridled in a hypersexualized society. People find no meaning and purpose in life because they have lost their faith and spurned God’s law.
Secession solves none of these problems. It will only accelerate the processes of moral decadence and national destruction. Only the arduous fight for a return to God and a moral order will provide the way out of the present crisis for all Americans.
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Appreciate your comments, John, but I wonder sometimes if some people are so incorrigible and can never change so that our scourge of abortion, homosexuality, Big government, etc. will never end.
It’s like Protestantism (I’m a Protestant), once you start dividing there’s no end to it. Liberals and conservatives are NOT split along state lines. Mostly, we’re split along rivers: the old river-based cities are liberal. In Missouri we have extremely liberal governments in St. Louis, Kansas City and Columbia. The rest of the state is generally conservative. If we left the Union, STL and KCMO would promptly secede from Missouri. There would be no end to it. In every real crisis we are deciding whether “this Nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure”. If we “divorce”, just as in a broken marriage, we fail the test of Christian character and sacrifice.
These national sins and errors will go on. My point is that they’ll go on in both nations if we “divorce”. Might as well stand hitched and fight on the old ground.
I’m not actually sure on that one. Abortion only became mainstream popular after Roe V Wade. Marijuana use skyrocketed in WA and OR (Me and my family live here) only after it was legalized. So much of the moral founding cracked when the public schools (run by liberal activists and fed money by similar activists in the government) led them away from their moral grounds. In other words, the government has a really big impact on the culture and it’s norms. So a government that would take back those things, I think, would largely reshape culture
I love my country, despite some of my fellow citizens. Pray for our nation and its leaders (and all Americans). United we stand…
With respect Mr. Horvat, I must dissent. As we are reminded in scripture, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). Ever since Lincoln’s Lyceum address in which he declares the general government should become “the political religion of the nation,” and the subsequent, multiple, unconstitutional actions he took, as president, to suppress the lawful secession of the Southern Confederacy, our republic of republics has been on a downward and accelerating death spiral towards totalitarianism. Lincoln’s debased interpretation on the Declaration of Independence, as dramatically articulated in the Gettysburg Address, displaced the foundational principle of State sovereignty with nationalism and empire. This imperium Lincoln created is now euphemistically called the ‘national’ government. We convolute national government with country. (They are two different entities I assure you). This ‘national’ government’s primary governing philosophy is majoritarianism and in that, the ‘national’ government has become the final arbiter of its own power.
Blue States and Blue municipalities will not allow a return nor abide by the return to a general government whose limits are clearly defined and enforce by the sovereign States through such mechanisms as nullification or as John C. Calhoun once proposed, the concept of a “concurrent majority” where super-majorities were required and in some case unanimous consent must be achieved to move legislation forward in the general government. There must be some mechanism to enforce the 10th amendment and if one where ever installed, Blue States and Blue citizens would more than like take to violence since there can be no acceptable constraints placed upon their ‘god’ government. I will refer you to the political violence during the summer of 2020 as but a small example of what could come. This would be especially true when those constraints would emanate from those whom our Blue citizens consider to be their ‘lesser.’
Since this is the case, those of us who would see a return to a constitutionally limited, federated republican form of government must advocate secession. As God gave man the choice in Eden, so I am bound to defend the rights of those who choose to be godless. However, I have the right to associate with those of my choosing and I choose not to associate with ‘those’ people. I will pray for them, I will offer help by directing them towards the scriptures, I will forgive and embrace them if they finally accept the conviction of the Holy Spirit and repent as I have, but I will not be governed by a group of people who will not be content to live out their godless lives in the peace I have provided through twenty-three years of military service. These godless people are determined to punish and prohibit any heresy or apostasy against their ‘god’, government. Best for us to be away. Good fences make good neighbors.
You speak of cultural forces and the possibility of their continued existence in any State that secedes. While this may be the case, the newly independent States can deal with those issue on a “think locally, act local” (Brion McClanahan) basis. We can annul the 14th amendment which arguable was enacted instead of being lawfully ratified and allow States constitutions to take up their rightful role in governance without unconstitutional interference from the general government. The 14th amendment has been used as a bludgeon to transfer the restrictions placed on the general government found in the Bill of Rights onto the several States by means of the federal judiciary through incorporation. The 14th amendment overthrew the federated republic of the original constitution and replaced it with an imperium. The fact that the general government (the general government being the agent, aka subordinate, of the principles, the States) was allowed to pass an amendment that included the words “No State shall…” signifies the overthrow of the original constitution order, States sovereignty and the establishment of the ‘national’ government the anti-Federalist feared and the Federalist promised could not happen. This was Red Republican majoritarianism at work during the Reconstruction era.
Fast forward to today. As States secede from ‘Lincoln’s leviathan’ that is our current imperium, relying on the kindly Providence that follows those who call upon God’s name, the Red State republic of republics would have the opportunity to return to the limited general government originally envisioned in the constitution. This will enable the States to freely deal with cultural and religious issue on a per State basis as it always should have been. The Red States can restore their primal place as the principles in this new federation and the general government will take on its lawful role as an agent of the States, dealing only with matters of common defense, foreign affairs, international trade and a limited role in regulating interstate commerce. This was the original intent of the constitution as per the ratification debates. This is what secession will offer to the Red States whose leaders and people are wise enough to learn from the past.
Invoking our God-given right to self-determination as articulated so well in the Declaration of Independence, I call for peaceful secession now. It will be a challenge to return Red States to the federate republic envisioned by the framers of our constitution no doubt. The rows will be hard to plow, the soil, rocky, the mules, stubborn and ornery. There will still be men and women of ambition who will attempt to maneuver the Red State republics in ways contrary to the constitutional federation envisioned by the framers of our republic of republics. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. The fight is to de-centralize government and get it closer to the people. State sovereignty must be restored and the general government put back in its place as an agent of the States, not their master. What the Blue States and Blue citizens do is their business, not mine. May God go with them and give those people peace. Echoing the supplication of President Jefferson Davis, (Confederate States of America), all we in the Red States ask is to be left alone. Those Blue citizens in our Red States who do not agree with this republic of republics form of governance are free to migrate to those Blue States that reflect their principles and values. Go in peace. It remains an honest question to see if Blue States will afford their Red citizens the same opportunity to migrate from Blue States to Red. Remember the Berlin Wall was built to keep the “crazy” people from escaping the joys of the Marxism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Could this end up becoming the disaster you have warned of Sir? Sure. But many said the same thing in 1776 when the colonies signed the Declaration of Independence. Placing our fate in the hands of God’s Providence proved to be the winning move in our First War of Independence. So let us attempt to repeat this part of 18th century history, without violence, while learning from the mistakes Lincoln inflicted upon our nation and not repeating those either. The simple fact is, the path we are on now will almost invariably lead to a greater disaster with God’s wrath and judgement attached to it. I want to fight for the restoration of His righteousness in our governance. The only peaceably way to achieve this now is through secession.
I will close with a quote from Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes, Confederate States Navy. If we should take the time to read his words, we will find that he was an oracle of our current events as he penned these words in 1868.
“and if this war does not separate these two nations, other wars will. If we succeed in preserving the principle of State sovereignty, the only principle which can save the whole country, North and South, from utter wreck and ruin-all will be well, whatever combinations of particular States may be made from time to time. The States being free, liberty will be saved and they will gravitate naturally like unto like- the puritan clinging to puritan and the cavalier to the cavalier. But if this principle be overthrown, if the mad idea be carried out, that all the American people must be molded into a common mass, and form one, consolidated government, under the rule of the majority, for no constitution will constrain them-constitutional liberty will disappear, and no man can predict the future-except in so far, that it is impossible for the puritan, and the cavalier to live together in peace.”
And from our Declaration of Independence:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and provide new Guards for their future security.”
Let us follow Abraham’s example when he dealt with conflict between his people and Lot’s. Let us do our duty. Let us resolve to solve these differences peacefully. Let it be Secession now.
The right doesn’t have a moral problem. Separating from the left would leave them to solve their moral problems while the right works on more important things.
First of all, Miss Taylor-Greene is probably doing this to bring attention to herself. The problem is that even if she is doing this for selfish reasons, others don’t see that and think “right on.” They don’t see the problems but simply a world free of liberal idiocy, which can’t happen unless we just go full on authoritarian.
Secondly, I think an issue that might make something like this acceptable to Greene and others like her is that even among many conservatives, divorce is fine. Many feel that if things are not working out, then it’s fine to leave. Sure they may decry frivolous divorces but when they want them, they justify them. It probably doesn’t help too that Greene and many evangelicals feel divorce, while a tragedy, is acceptable. They basically feel as if they’ve been mistreated or even abused and are done. What sad though is that basically they are just treating marriage like liberals are, except they can justify it somehow.
Lastly, I can’t say how I feel about this. I want the country to work it out, but maybe we can’t. You can’t force people to do anything, but you also can’t close yourself off and just condemn the other. I think this works in a nation too and I hope we can find a way to do this but I worry so many citizens are too far apart and that we wont share anything but language and a love of country but that doesn’t seem to be enough. I guess the best I can say is to stay together and promote good values and do so with charity towards all and malice towards none. Sadly Greene and her ilk just want this so they can give a middle finger to the left, even if the right would normally find such an act repulsive too.
I have always considered myself a “bottom-up” conservative in terms of liberty and sovereignty. The federal government has grown so large and intrusive that, regardless of your moral or political philosophy, it threatens to impose its will on everyone. The states’ sovereignty should be greater. Power should be removed from the federal government and restored to the states, which are closer to its citizens. And some small power should also be taken from the states and given to each municipality, which although not politically sovereign, is the closest to the people it governs.
Therefore I perceive the cries for secession to be nothing more than a plea from the individual states and local governments to be set free from the yoke of the national government, who has the audacity and arrogance to dictate how we all should live, regardless of our circumstances and moral conscience.
Below is a long quote from St. George Tucker, an American Revolution veteran, slave emancipation advocate, law professor, respected legal scholar, and federal judge. He wrote View of the Constitution, the first detailed commentary on the U.S. Constitution after its ratification, and Commentaries that became the most important text on early American law.
He was an Anti-Federalist (i.e., true Federalist) and a strong believer in Natural Rights. His defense of the Second Amendment was not in favor of individual rights but states rights, that is to say he saw the purpose of the public owning a gun not as a justification for vigilantism but as a way for citizens to protect their freedom against authoritarianism (Saul Cornell, St. George Tucker and the Second Amendment: original understandings and modern misunderstandings).
I’m a progressive left-liberal myself, apparently the only one in the comment section here; although I’m also more civil libertarian than the average conservative. That is why I’m persuaded by the Anti-Federalist position on many issues. Time has proven them correct over and over again in their fears and predictions. Tucker was simply pointed out, in the following, that (1) the second constitution was actually unconstitutional according to the first (Articles of Confederation) and that therefore (2) secession already happened once before.
“The dissolution of these systems happens, when all the confederates by mutual consent, or some of them, voluntarily abandon the confederacy, and govern their own states apart, or a part of them form a different league and confederacy among each other, and withdraw themselves from the confederacy with the rest. Such was the proceeding on the part of those of the American states which first adopted the present constitution of the United States, and established a form of federal government, essentially different from that which was first established by the articles of confederation, leaving the states of Rhode Island and North Carolina, both of which, at first, rejected the new constitution, to themselves. This was an evident breach of that article of the confederation,57 which stipulated that those “articles should be inviolably observed by every state, and that the union should be perpetual; nor should any alteration at any time thereafter be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in the congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every state.” Yet the seceding states, as they may be not improperly termed, did not hesitate, as soon as nine states had ratified the new constitution, to supersede the former federal government, and establish a new form, more consonant to their opinion of what was necessary to the preservation and prosperity of the federal union. But although by this act the seceding states subverted the former federal government, yet the obligations of the articles of confederacy as a treaty of perpetual alliance, offensive and defensive, between all the parties thereto, no doubt remained; and if North Carolina and Rhode Island had never acceded to the new form of government, that circumstance, I conceive, could never have lessened the obligation upon the other states to perform those stipulations on their parts which the states, who were unwilling to change the form of the federal government, had by virtue of those articles a right to demand and insist upon. For the inadequacy of the form of government established by those articles could not be charged upon one state more than another, nor had North Carolina or Rhode Island committed any breach of them; the seceding states therefore had no cause of complaint against them. On the contrary, these states being still willing to adhere to the terms of the confederacy, had the right of complaining, if there could be any right to complain of the conduct of states endeavoring to meliorate their own condition, by establishing a different form of government. But the seceding states were certainly justified upon that principle; and from the duty which every state is acknowledged to owe to itself, and its own citizens, by doing whatsoever may best contribute to advance its own happiness and prosperity; and much more, what may be necessary to the preservation of its existence as a state.58 Nor must we forget that solemn declaration to which everyone of the confederate states assented59 that whenever any form of government is destructive of the ends of its institution, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government. Consequently whenever the people of any state, or number of states, discovered the inadequacy of the first form of federal government to promote or preserve their independence, happiness, and union, they only exerted that natural right in rejecting it, and adopting another, which all had unanimously assented to, and of which no force or compact can deprive the people of any state, whenever they see the necessity, and possess the power to do it. And since the seceding states, by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves, without the consent of the rest, have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may, in their opinion, require it, as unquestionable; we may infer that that right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into, since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first, nor more binding upon the contracting parties. Their obligation, therefore, to preserve the present constitution, is not greater than their former obligations were, to adhere to the articles of the confederation; each state possessing the same right of withdrawing itself from the confederacy without the consent of the rest, as any number of them do, or ever did, possess. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments established by compact should not be changed for light or transient causes; but should a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evince a design in any one of the confederates to usurp a dominion over the rest; or, if those who are entrusted to administer the government, which the confederates have for their mutual convenience established, should manifest a design to invade their sovereignty, and extend their own power beyond the terms of compact, to the detriment of the states respectively, and to reduce them to a state of obedience, and finally to establish themselves in a state of permanent superiority, it then becomes not only the right, but the duty of the states respectively, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.60 To deny this, would be to deny to sovereign independent states, the power which, as colonies, and dependent territories, they have mutually agreed they had a right to exercise, and did actually exercise, when they shook off the government of England, first, and adopted the present constitution of the United States, in the second instance.”
Extending upon Tucker’s argument, it’s useful to note that the only justification for the Constitutional Convention was that the Articles of Confederation was ineffective and would fail. But it was never intended to succeed as national governance. That was the whole point. It was a confederation, not a nation. Each state was it’s own nation. It would be like making a similar judgment of the European Union as a failed national government and so justifying the destruction of all European nations in order to make Europe into a single country. The worst that would’ve happened to the original American confederation, as even some critics admitted, was that it would’ve broken down into multiple more naturally-aligned confederations. So, why all the fear-mongering, both back then and today?
American Creation
by Joseph Ellis
Kindle Locations 1558-1572
“James Madison was one of the critics who did grasp this frustrating fact: “The question whether it is possible and worthwhile to preserve the Union of the States,” he warned in 1786, “must be speedily decided one way or other. Those who are indifferent to the preservation would do well to look forward to the consequences of its extinction.” The word that Madison, along with most critics of the current confederation, used to describe the consequences of inaction was “anarchy,” a term suggesting utter chaos, widespread violence, possible civil war between or among the states, and the likely intervention of several European powers eager to exploit the political disarray for their own imperial purposes.11
“While we can never know for sure, since history veered sharply in another direction at the end of the decade, the most likely outcome if the Articles of Confederation collapsed was not anarchy but dismemberment into two or three separate confederacies. Madison himself acknowledged that the gossip mills in both Europe and America were predicting that the imminent dissolution of the Articles would probably lead to “a partition of the states into two or more Confederacies.” An article in the Boston Independent Chronicle envisioned a regional union of five New England states, leaving “the rest of the continent to pursue their own imbecilic and disjointed plans.” The most probable scenario was a tripartite division of regional alliances that created an American version of Europe. New England would be like Scandinavia, the middle Atlantic states like western Europe, the states south of the Potomac like the Mediterranean countries. How this new American trinity would have fared over the ensuing decades is anybody’s guess. Whether it would have become a mere way station on the road to civil war and foreign invasion or a stable set of independent republics that coexisted peacefully and prosperously is impossible to know. But separate confederacies, not outright anarchy, appeared the most likely alternative if and when the Articles dissolved.12”
Thank you for this article.
I used to ponder the possibility and risks of a national divorce.
After reading this, I am completely and thoroughly against such a move.
However, I doubt very much that either side of the divide will willingly turn to God. Something bad will have to occur.
I could comment on many points in this article, but will choose to focus on one only.
You mentioned that the big cities in Texas are blue. This is not likely true with the exception of Austin.
In order to confidently state that these cities are blue, you have to be sure that vote fraud has not affected the outcome of the vote in these areas. What is unusual is that on a national level the cities look blue, but on a county and local level many red candidates won in the recent election. Including judges, city council members and the like.
The fact that vote fraud has plagued national elections for decades is only disputed among the ignorant, or main stream media who are puppets of the powers that be.
One may say, “you’re a conspiracy nut….,” but name calling does not change facts.
Vote fraud was scientifically documented in a paper published by professors representing nearly a dozen universities back in 2005. (Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies)
This isn’t just a problem of Democrat vs Republican. There are serious problems facing our country and until we are strong enough to recognize and face them, finding a real solution will be impossible.
The divide between red and blue is not equal. The main stream media does not accurately represent those with conservative values. One cannot take anything state media says at face value.
We are at war and those who fail to recognize this fail to see what is happening not only in our own country, but around the entire world.
In 2009, I wrote a magazine article explaining why it would be good to “Partition America” (the title of my article). If I rewrote it today it would be more apropos and even more vehement. The main reason is to prove which system of living, or worldview, leads to human flourishing. As long as we allow the Left to ruin Western Civilization we will never stop them. On the other hand, if we let half the country go all the way with the evil the Left wants without impediment from good people, and we live in our half under conservative Christian principles, it will not take too long for those who now support the Left, at least nominally with their votes, to see the devastation leftist ideology causes, having not learned from the USSR or Red China, the two Germanys or the two Koreas. I understand your point of view in this article and I appreciate it. But I remain in favor of partition because I believe in time the Atheist/Socialist states would only in this way see the error of their ways and come back to sanity.