A national divorce, in some form or fashion, is once again burbling up in our national dialogue. Some talk of a blue state/ red state division, or more specifically, the coastal states and the interior states going their separate ways. Others present a breakdown by regions, with the plains, the mountains, Cascadia, Appalachia, the Great Lakes, and such divisions being proposed in some kind of national divorce.
This latest iteration of the idea, the regional divorce, caused me to remember something from years ago, which brought up this question. When considering how to divide the states, what makes people think that the individual states, once the division has taken place, will hold together as coherent political entities? They, or rather we, have not really done much governing of ourselves in our states for many decades. It is not like the world of 1787, when each state was well practiced in the art of self government.
These days, certainly since the 1960's, and more accurately going back to the 1930's (or earlier), most of the meaningful decisions about government have been made in Washington DC. Federal mandates and subsidies determine or greatly influence almost all policies. Without that guiding hand in DC, are we sure we will cohere as states?
Will the Valley in California want to be ruled by the coastal cities? The same or similar questions would come up in other states, such as Illinois, Colorado, or even such stalwarts as Kansas, Arizona, or Pennsylvania. Once we were each independent and sovereign nations, our trade, military, and foreign policies would be up for grabs, and who knows where they would end up, and who would be in charge.
We should be very careful here, because that spirit of succession, once it is loosed, can get completely out of hand, and what would there be to stop it? Even the old Confederacy was starting to break down before their defeat. Eastern Tennessee was moving to succeed from the Confederacy, as were parts of Louisiana.
No, before setting out on a course of national divorce, we should stop and think about where it might end, In fact, where it would probably end. It is unlikely to resemble the Velvet Revolution that marked the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, but rather it promises to be as bad, or worse, than the violent, war ravaged breakup of Yugoslavia.
Most importantly, some kind of national divorce is completely unnecessary. Those who call for one complain that we have become a nation that doesn't agree with itself on too many issues, especially the moral and cultural issues. We seem to exist in two (or more) different realities, red state and blue state.
The thing is, instead of divorce, the solution to these differences of opinions would be the simple and obvious move to return to our original plan of government. Return to having the level of state and local self government we previously enjoyed. In that way of doing things, going back at least to prior to the 1930's, or even all the way back to before corporations were declared to be persons in 1886, the states (and localities) had widely divergent moral and cultural styles.
That structure of government could handle all our cultural and moral differences without breaking a sweat. Accommodating and assimilating differences is exactly what it was designed to do. E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one; remember that?
Consider, as an analogy, the American flag. Those favoring a national divorce of some form or fashion imagine that they will be able to cut out a star or two from the flag, and hold on to it as their new nation. That, however, is not is what is likely to happen. If that flag starts unraveling, the unraveling will probably not stop with the stars still intact. Rather, the unraveling will likely continue until none of us has more that a single bare thread to hold onto, and that will be under constant threat from others. Or, what is also very likely, we would at some point suffer military invasion and conquest. Do you reckon that some international despot will suffer the continued healthy existence of a freedom loving people?
So before we blithely trip down the primrose path toward some kind of national divorce, we ought first to take a long hard look at where that path will lead us. That path will most likely lead us to destruction, despair, and much worse problems than we have now. What's more, if we would honestly look around, ridding ourselves of our blinding mutual hatred, we can see that a national breakup is not needed at all. The only thing we need is to revive our original way of doing things, return to the Constitution as written and amended, and we can then absorb all our cultural differences and remain a united, free and strong nation.
