US: A national divorce? Separating the Red and Blue

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) resurrected her calls for a “national divorce”, arguing that Republican and Democratic states needed to be separated. “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” Greene said. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done,” ‘The Hill’ informs.

“All possible in a National Divorce scenario,” Greene wrote on Twitter in December 2021. “After Democrat voters and big donors ruin a state like California, you would think it wise to stop them from doing it to another great state like Florida. Brainwashed people that move from CA and NY really need a cooling off period.”

Greene’s renewed call for a national split came after she spent the morning criticizing President Biden for his unannounced trip to Ukraine, arguing that the president was ignoring domestic responsibilities to make his international visit.

“Biden didn’t go to East Palestine, Ohio on President’s Day,” Greene said. “He went to Ukraine, a NON-NATO nation, whose leader is an actor and is apparently now commanding our United States military to world war. We must impeach this America Last fool before it’s too late.”

The statement provoked a reaction from “The Raven” publications. They note: “When Marjorie Taylor Greene recently tweeted, “We need a national divorce,” she set off a furor. Subsequent tweets clarified she was not calling for a new civil war or creation of two separate nations, but a radical devolution of federal power that would leave states in control of domestic policy and retain a common national defense.

While her statements might seem extreme, they represent a substantial element of the political right that even has reflections on the left. The sense we no longer have much in common as a country, but as Greene puts it, suffer from “irreconcilable differences,” spans the spectrum.

“We’re less united today than we’ve been at any time since the Civil War, divided by politics, religion and culture. In all the ways that matter, save for the naked force of the law, we’re already divided into two nations just as much as in 1861.”

The Constitution set up a federal system that was based on classic liberalism of human freedom set out in the Bill of Rights. That is what gave us a common identity as U.S. of Americans, F.H. Buckley writes in his book “American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup”. But, he adds, conservative nationalists are moving away from those traditions, and along with it that common identity. “We’re overlarge, and we’ve sacrificed the trust and fellow feeling that a common national identity used to provide.”

Buckley acknowledges, “Different states might now go their own way on human rights... Diverse sets of rights would permit Americans to settle in jurisdictions whose policies match their own preferences.”

That assumes a certain level of resources and flexibility that many, such as millions of Black people in the South, might not have even if they wanted to move.

We are in an era of deep national division, much as Buckley writes. But much of the division stems from exactly these questions of human rights and environmental protections. We lack a national consensus, and are thus deeply split.

“We’re likely to remain united,” Buckley concludes. “Nevertheless it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility of disunion. It’s the direction in which we’re headed, and the notion it couldn’t happen again is fanciful.”

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