For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone.
Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission or simply parting company?
In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them.
The chairman of the Texas Republican Party appeared to float secession after the Supreme Court shot down a lawsuit led by the Lone Star State seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election.
Texas GOP Chairman Allen West rebuked the high court in a statement, saying that “law-abiding states” should “form a Union” after the decision throwing out the lawsuit from Texas.
Seventeen other states and 126 House Republicans had backed Texas’s effort to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — four key states that secured President-elect Joe Biden‘s win.
The court’s ruling, which said that Texas lacked the legal right to litigate over how other states conduct their elections, represented a devastating blow to efforts by President Trump and his allies to challenge the election results.
“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 U.S. congressman, has decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences,” West said after the ruling. “This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the U.S. constitution and not be held accountable.”
“This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic,” he continued. “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”
Walter E. Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University wrote an interesting article about secession. In it he states:
Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it.
What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861. Let’s look at the secession issue.
At the 1787 constitutional convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state.
James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, “No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”
Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.”
The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede.
The New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860) stated: “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Million of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.”
The Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861) wrote: “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861) went on to say: “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”
There’s more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution would have never been ratified if states thought that they could not maintain their sovereignty.
The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives.
Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but author H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.”
Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”
Think about this folks. George Washington was a traitor to his country, England. The American Revolution was a secessionist movement. Our country was founded on the act of secession and this is why it’s always an available option.
So, just how would one approach the task of dividing up the world’s leading superpower?
I found an interesting article written back in 2013 by Joshua Holland, a fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
It’s easy to write about how out of touch with real America those liberal, socialist coastal elites are, or how backward the South’s gun toting, bible thumpers can be, but I’m not sure either side has paused to consider the details of exactly what it would take to secede.
Making it a truly amicable divorce would have to be the primary goal.
A scenario in which two powerful new states with a shared border and a degree of mutual hatred that might at any minute end up at war, would be the last thing anyone would want.
This also isn’t the 19th century – like it or not, we live in an interconnected world, and we’d still share 200-plus years of common history.
An amicable separation would require creating something like a North American Union, with each country maintaining sovereignty over domestic policy while establishing some cooperation through binding treaties. Let’s consider some of the sticky points.
First, Where Do You Draw the Borders?
Texas could just secede, or the United States could dissolve into regional blocs with similar political cultures.
You might have the Pacific States of America, the Southwestern States of America, the Northeastern States, etc. But most Americans like living in a large, powerful state, and size – market size and military might – matters on the international stage.
If one were to divide the country in two, a quick glance at a map reveals that there’s no clean way to sever the “red” and “blue” states into two contiguous territories.
In previous elections, North Dakota went for Romney by 20 points, but it would have to be part of the “Northern States of America.” New Mexico, which Obama won by 10 points, would end up being one of the more liberal states in the “Southern States of America.”
It gets trickier when you consider the political and cultural differences within states.
A farmer in Southern Illinois once told me, “We consider this area to be Northern Kentucky.” You would have to hold a county-by-county referendum to determine exactly where to draw the line.
Think about it. Would Camden County want to join with Columbia, St. Louis, or Kansas City?
Second issue, The Military
This gets sticky. How do you split up the most powerful military on the planet? Ideally, you wouldn’t; you’d create a NATO-style common defense force, with a central chain of command, and it would be dedicated to protecting the territory formerly known as the United States.
This would avoid a situation in which the world’s leading military powers shared a common border – a scenario that could lead to all sorts of ugliness.
But here’s the problem: the two new countries would want the ability to set their own foreign policies and determine their own levels of military spending.
Presumably, the “blue” states would want to spend a little less on guns and a little more on the Green New Deal (or a lot less on guns and a lot more on The Green New Deal).
One possible solution would be to separate true “defense” from military spending.
We could agree to a treaty that sets common defense spending at, say, half of current levels for a dedicated North American Defense Force, and then allow the two new countries to maintain their own “expeditionary forces,” based overseas, that would be barred from operating in North America.
If one of the new countries wants to play World Police, it can do so and bear those costs.
What to do with our 700-plus foreign bases? I guess you’d divide them up like common assets in any other divorce.
Third Issue, Trade and Borders
If the idea is to pursue different ideas about the role of government in society, why would we want to give up the advantages that come with being the world’s second largest economy?
The best scenario would be to retain one big economic zone along the lines of the EU – two countries establishing their own domestic affairs, in a union with some common policy that facilitates the free exchange of goods, services and people.
This would give citizens the opportunity to vote with their feet if they don’t like living with their new model of governance.
But there are two problems here. First, we’d have to avoid having the red states become an economic zone, with cheap labor and lax environmental regulations that blue state firms could take advantage of to manufacture products for sale in their domestic market.
The second problem would be contraband goods flowing back and forth – what’s the point of stricter gun laws in the North if a constant stream of AR-15s flows up from the South? (The opposite would be true if the blue states legalized marijuana and the red states maintained its prohibition.)
The first problem might be answered with some sort of tariffs that equalize labor costs and regulatory burdens, creating an even playing field for firms to compete without engaging in a race to the bottom.
The second problem is stickier. Would we want a high-tech, heavily guarded border with limited crossing points like we now have with Mexico?
In the EU, people move freely across borders. Perhaps checkpoints could be established on the most heavily trafficked routes. Random vehicle searches – with penalties for trafficking in contraband goods – might be enough to manage the problem, at least to a significant degree, without having formal border crossings.
The Fourth Issue: Taxes and Benefits
This is a big one. It’s safe to assume that the blue states would tax their citizens more and offer better benefits in return. How would we deal with these differences if we maintain an open-border policy, and people spend time living and working in both new countries?
The European Union might again provide an answer: a bilateral tax treaty. In the EU, people who spend more than half of a year working outside their home country are considered tax residents of that country.
Those who spend less than half a year working in another country only end up paying taxes on their income in that country.
As far as retirement and health benefits go, as in the EU, you’d accrue benefits in the country where you worked, or, if you’ve worked in both countries, then you would be eligible for retirement benefits in both countries according to what you’ve paid into the system during your career.
Living on social Security, I have no idea how you would manage the transition of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security payments for those of us living in a state that seceded. That would be a huge point of negotiations in an amicable split.
Fifth Issue: Currency/Monetary Policy
Ideally, we’d maintain a common currency and avoid a lot of the hassles the EU has had by having a single central bank overseeing monetary policy (most of the EU has a single currency but no common fiscal policy, which has caused a lot of problems). No more Federal Reserve?
In the past, Virginia legislators approved a plan to study the feasibility of the state minting its own coins in order to survive the inevitable collapse of the federal government. And distrust of the Federal Reserve would probably make a common fiscal policy all but impossible.
Issue Number Six: Minority Rights
Liberals would no doubt worry about minority voting rights in Alabama and conservatives would be equally worried about the right of Missourians to own firearms.
One way to address these concerns would be to have both new countries adopt our existing Constitution. If they want to amend it, they can do so through a constitutional convention, or by passing an amendment with a super-majority in both chambers of Congress and then having it affirmed by three-quarters of their states.
This is a high bar, which means that only constitutional changes with very broad support would be possible. It may not be ideal, but it would go a long way toward protecting minority rights in both new countries.
They would also have independent Supreme Courts, and over the years those courts would no doubt come to very different interpretations of the Constitution. That’s probably a good balance; significant change would eventually be apparent, but absent new amendments, its core principles would remain intact.
I would like to add one more major issue to consider.
Number Seven: Unity
In order to pull off any secession movement you must have one key element. Unity.
Throughout history, the failure of secession movements has not been military domination by one side over the other, it has always been a lack of unity among the participants.
In the Russian Civil War, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power, those opposed to communism rose up. The problem was Lenin had a solid following known as The Reds who wanted communism. The opposition, known as The Whites were made up of people who wanted the Czar back, people who wanted a King, people who wanted a parliamentary government, people who wanted no government, and people who wanted a system like ours. They were not unified. Lenin’s people were.
So, think about that. Can Conservatives all agree on what type of government they want and the direction it would take on the world stage?
Better yet. We already see the turmoil within the Democratic party trying to figure out where they are headed when it comes to domestic policies yet alone how they will act in the theater of foreign relations. Again, no unity from within spells disaster.
So folks, there you have it. These are just a few of the issues that would have to be resolved if we went the secession route.
Bear in mind, these huge problems would have to be resolved if we decided on a friendly separation.
Can you imagine how difficult it would be following a violent Civil War in which millions would perish at the hands of fellow Americans?
What do you think? As difficult as it would be, is secession the way to go?