“We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted on February 20. “Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s [sic] traitorous America Last policies, we are done,” she added.
Such a call for a “national divorce” is nothing new.
For those unsure of the analogy, Greene’s “national divorce” is a hypothetical scenario that has been discussed in recent years, particularly in the United States, where the country is often divided politically between “red states” that tend to vote Republican and “blue states” that tend to vote Democratic.
The idea of a “national divorce” typically involves the secession or splitting apart of the country along political lines, where the conservative-leaning states would form one new nation and the liberal-leaning states would form another, as explained by Greene in her tweet.
This hypothetical scenario has been the subject of much debate and discussion, with some arguing that it is a realistic and necessary solution to the growing political divide in the country, while others argue that it would be a disastrous and unworkable outcome that would lead to significant economic and social problems.
Of course, there are those who through a misunderstanding of history insist that the right of secession was decided in the U.S. Civil War.
For example, in a story about Greene’s tweet, NBC News reported: “The U.S. fought a civil war in the 1860s after a group of southern states tried to secede to preserve the legal enslavement of Black people.”
There is much that is wrong in NBC’s rehearsal of history, but this article will focus on secession as a right that may be exercised by any people finding themselves oppressed by a tyrannical government.
About 175 years ago, another member of the U.S. House of Representatives delivered a passionate and accurate analysis of the right of secession. On January 12, 1848, then-Representative Abraham Lincoln declared on the floor of the House:
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which, we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.
Lincoln and Greene aren’t alone in their support for secession, apparently. According to a poll conducted by Bright Line Watch and YouGov in June 2021, 66 percent of Southern Republican respondents supported seceding from the United States and forming a new country. Many Western Democrats likewise were pro-secession, with 47 percent supporting severing the country into distinct unions.
Beyond the popular support for secession, there is a philosophical basis for the act, as well. Classically, of course, the idea of restraining republics to territories wherein the residents share fundamental values was accepted as a given. In The Spirit of the Laws, the Baron Montesquieu asserts that “the public good is better felt, better known, lies nearer to each citizen.” In this, the celebrated Frenchman was advocating a small size. However, a union of “red states” would necessarily be large.
Furthermore, how much likemindedness would exist even in a union comprised of only so-called red states or blue states?
There are substantial and fundamental disagreements regarding the role and the limits of government among Republicans and Democrats. Admittedly, there are some shared philosophies among those partisans, and perhaps government would be closer to the consent of the governed in such smaller unions.
As indicated above, though, those who oppose even the idea of secession often claim it would be nearly impossible in light of the significant procedural, political, and economic obstacles.
Paradoxically, the perceived problems of secession are solved by more secession. The creation of two federal governments — as Greene called for in her tweet —would provide more practical choices to citizens in choosing a place to live under a government that more closely matches their individual values: economic, social, religious, and political.
In other words, that government functions best that is closer to the ideal perceived by the people who live in that society.
There is the irrefutable fact that any segment of a population who finds that their values and governmental goals are not being pursued in their present country — who are forced to remain under that nation’s regime — are hostages.
As humans, we are “endowed by our Creator” with an “unalienable” right to create governments to protect our life, liberty, and property. Likewise, it is our right to “alter or abolish” those governments when they become “destructive of these ends.”
These are truths that, as Americans, we hold to be self-evident.
Maybe Representatives Greene and Lincoln are (were) on to something, something that apparently a growing plurality of Americans agrees with in principle: that a national divorce may be preferable to continuing to endure abuse by an increasingly out-of-control federal government.
What is certain, however, is that a growing number of concerned citizens of the United States are no longer willing to recur to Congress to repeal unconstitutional laws or to file legal complaints in the hope that the courts will strike down offensive measures.
They believe that while perhaps commendable, these tactics are futile and offer no guarantee of the restoration of constitutionally ensured freedom. They refuse to wait on this or that president, this or that congressman, or this or that political party to acknowledge their pleas for relief from federal oppression.
Instead, they unashamedly will assume their right and their duty to derail the “long train of abuses and usurpations” and “provide new Guards for their future security” — the states and themselves.
