National Divorce Idea Gaining Some Traction

A while back I lamented that a national divorce might be necessary. Since then, the idea actually seems to be gaining a bit of traction. People on both the right and left have been kicking it around. Still, the level of support shown in a recent poll was a real shocker. If you believe the UVA poll, close to half the country already agrees that splitting up is a good idea. In fact, the push for a national divorce has gotten strong enough that a New York Post writer felt the need to throw cold water on it.

In solidly blue New York, Trump won 3,251,997 votes to Biden’s 5,244,886 in 2020. Trump’s 3.2 million is more than five times the number of people living in Wyoming, the reddest state in the country, and more than 16 times the votes Trump won there. Do conservatives simply surrender the whole Empire State, and those 3.2 million voters, in the divorce? How would those 3.2 million feel about that?

The columnist’s main argument against a split seems to be that it would be messy. Well, duh. Any kind of divorce is gonna be messy. Dividing up a couple and their assets is hard enough. Dividing up a country will be extremely difficult and contentious. And unlike, say, Brexit we won’t have a body of water separating us from our exes. How is the national debt divided up? Military assets? What happens to all the illegal aliens? It would be ugly. And exactly what the break up would look like is tough to say. Maybe we don’t end up as separate countries at all, but revert to an extreme form of Federalism? Who knows. But, yes, a national divorce would obviously be a colossal mess. However, the alternative the Post offers up seems to be a no go.

We’re still a very new country; we continue to grow and evolve. The solution isn’t to divide it up so we could be (briefly) better represented. It’s to persuade others to our way of thinking — and voting. And to remember the ideas that forged our national marriage in the first place.

The reason a national divorce is even being discussed is precisely because we can’t persuade others to our way of thinking. One side is explicitly repudiating the “ideas that forged our national marriage in the first place.” We have literally nothing left in common. The right believes in free speech whether they agree with it or not. The left wants censorship of misinformation and hate speech codes. The right wants a free market economy with minimal regulations. The left wants a socialist centrally planned economy where corporations are compelled to serve the common good. The right believes in the right to keep and bear arms. The left wants to confiscate all the guns. The right believes in a color-blind society where everyone is treated equal. The left wants an identity-based politics where equality of outcomes is enforced. I honestly think we are close to being the most divided we have ever been. Leading up to the Civil War, the North and the South were bitterly divided over the issue of slavery. But even back then, Americans still shared most of the same values. When the war was over, they had some common basis to rebuild. We don’t have that today. The left and right in America are fundamentally opposed on almost every single issue. In my opinion, the idea we can just talk it out is hopelessly naïve. Either we split. Or we fight it out until one side subjugates the other. Possibly with bloodshed involved.

To my thinking, the real impediment to a national divorce would be the political class and the special interests they serve. The cabal entrenched in DC has got the most to lose from a national break up. They have spent decades building up their power, and won’t willingly give it up. Something truly ugly would need to happen before the political class would grudgingly get on board. Things will have to get a lot worse before a national divorce is really taken seriously. Sadly, I believe they will.