National Divorce?
Is breaking up the U.S. a good idea? Law professor F.H. Buckley and Libertarian Party activist Jonathan Casey debate.
On February 21, law professor F.H. Buckley and Libertarian Party activist Jonathan Casey debated the resolution, "The breakup of the United States into different regions is a workable option likely to bring a marked improvement in human affairs." The debate was held at New York City's Sheen Center and hosted by The Soho Forum, which receives fiscal sponsorship from Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason.
Taking the affirmative was Buckley, a foundation professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School. He is a frequent media guest, a senior editor at The American Spectator, and a columnist for the New York Post. He is the author of the 2020 book American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup. Some of his other books include Progressive Conservatism, Curiosity and Its Twelve Rules for Life, and The Republican Workers Party.
Taking the negative was Casey, the founder and chair of the Libertarian Party Classical Liberal Caucus. He has worked and volunteered in the liberty movement for several years, specializing in communication. He founded the Classical Liberal Caucus to promote a professional and policy-based message from within the Libertarian Party.
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The balkanization of the US is inevitable.
And your hope is to rush to enslavement under an oppressive leftist government.
Haha, Artie believes in Replacement Theory.
Yes, he has been proffering this for some time now.
Never thought of it in those terms. Very perceptive.
🙂
Much of the nation does not want to emulate Chicago, cultural capital of your paradigm.
History tells us all empires fall. This one happens to be on a downward path and picking up speed.
I have yet to see him respond to my request for specifics of his much ballyhooed “shining examples of progressive communities;”
of course he will not because there aren’t any.
The guy used to be a crank and a troll, now he’s just a troll attempting to generate threads of outrage, but just doesn’t put enough effort into it.
Muted Rev long ago.
Yes, adjective Artie only plays one note. He’s very boring.
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Hey, Rev, you know what else is inevitable?
Him flourishing his cape?
😉
You must have no friends, which doesn’t surprise me. MANY couples and families have right-wingers, left-wingers, anarchists, communists, socialists, etc. Only in your basement world is every one from individual up to higher levels all uniform
You say that as if it’s a bad thing.
The Czech and Slovak Republics split.
Power has devolved in the UK and parts of Europe.
Why shouldn’t nations split into the smallest units that have a fairly coherent culture and world view?
Is a bad idea. Individual states, seceding? Okay, sure. Just don’t do it over slavery or shit like that. But I’ve always felts states should leave the union if due process is followed.
But this national divorce micro-movement is not about secession, but splitting the country into two, with a Red nation and a Blue nation. This is silly. When is a partisan effort for partisan reasons. One team could barely manage to get a speaker named even though they had a majority, how could they manage as their own nation? And could you imagine Texas agreeing to be ruled by Florida? Utter nonsense.
If you’re going to separate, do so over firm principles, not election gripes. Splitting over party lines is bad, it’s an explicit admission that the goal is SINGLE PARTY RULE.
Secession of any kind is always going to be over partisan reasons. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Splitting over party lines is bad, it’s an explicit admission that the goal is SINGLE PARTY RULE.
You already have counties in Oregon wanting to join Idaho, and others in Illinois, making noise about leaving their states because they are already subject to single party rule. They barely have any say as it is because of the city-state dominance of Portland and Chicago.
Saying that states shouldn’t be allowed to split up or that they shouldn’t be allowed to leave is like an abusive spouse arguing that a bad marriage needs to continue for the sake of the children. But what’s actually better for the children–keeping them in a dysfunctional family environment so they continue to believe that is how a normal marriage should be, or to show them that people who don’t get along at all don’t need to force themselves to stay together?
“When is a partisan effort for partisan reasons.”
Any movement for seceding is going to be driven by partisan motivations, by definition. Any such effort has to be motivated by a difference in political values.
Maybe there might be disputes between Florida and Texas, but neither wants to be ruled by the decisions of the electorates of the failing states of California and New York.
So are the people of Miami, Houston etc more interested in that too? I suspect not.
I know Austin would hate that. And it’s similar to the Scottish independence stuff. People in Aberdeen and Inverness dislike being ruled from Glasgow as they do from London.
Maybe they should try not ruling each other.
People like lording it over others. They hate being lorded over
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Sure, but nothing is stopping those cities from carving out their own de jure fiefdoms. They aren’t making that kind of noise right now because Florida was a solid purple state for a long time, and the Dems expect to flip Texas any year now due to border immigration.
The eastern Oregon counties want to leave Oregon because the whole state has been dominated by Portland for decades; any Republican candidate in a two party race basically needs to hit over a 70-30 split outside Multnomah County to even have a whisker of a chance; the disparity is that wide there.
Florida and Texas are pretty damned big states electorally. Big enough that they together can influence the outcome in an election.
Only California has more votes than Texas, and Florida is tied with New York. In addition the number of electoral votes accorded to the smaller red states is numerous. This is why Trump won the 2016 election and came damned close to winning 2020 as well. It’s why Team Red is in charge of Congress.
The excuse that Red states are being ruled by Blue states is stupid in the extreme.
Florida and Texas are pretty damned big states electorally. Big enough that they together can influence the outcome in an election.
That’s only been the case once in the last 40 years, at least. Elections have ultimately been decided by the Rust Belt states, not Florida or Texas.
This is why Trump won the 2016 election and came damned close to winning 2020 as well. It’s why Team Red is in charge of Congress
See above about the Rust Belt. And Team Red is only in charge of the House, not all of Congress, and that just barely.
The excuse that Red states are being ruled by Blue states is stupid in the extreme.
It’s not a question of rule, it’s a question of ideological split, which is the argument I actually made.
Thread:
https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1629231220801572864?t=6VR2KNsu_FN37rCURQVxqA&s=19
The political establishment and the left used the covid-19 crisis to push for nationwide mail-in voting.
This increased the number of ballots cast by mail from 28.8 million in 2016 to 66.4 million in 2020.
This fundamentally changed the outcome of the 2020 election.
[Graphic]
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In 2012, the NYT said, “all the evidence of stolen elections involves absentee ballots.”
Slate said, “the only voting fraud schemes with the potential to actually swing elections involved mail-in ballots.”
So why the nationwide push for vote by mail?
[Links]
There isn’t one state in our nation that isn’t purple. They appear red or blue because of winner-take-all voting rules.
A national divorce would be giving into Team Red and Blue and their stupid, destructive mutual campaign to drag everyone into being a partisan and attaching political meaning to every thing under the Sun.
Yep, even in our Blue upon Blue state, all of the counties but one are purple (and that one county is SF County). Shitfire and brimstone, our current Team Red Speaker of the House of the United States represents my flipping California home town!
It’s a state that has provided two Team Red Presidents within my lifetime, and four Team Red governors (literally 50% of governors in my lifetime were Team Red).
Deep blue California, home of the John Birch Society, the Reagan Presidential Library, and evangelical Christian mega churches.
California has more Republican voters than any other state. (6.9M, vs. 5.9M in Texas and 5.7M in Florida)
That’s due to the sheer population size of the state, which makes it a false comparison. In reality, the California GOP is a fully neutered creature, and everything that dumbshit Mike Laursen cites is from a California that’s at least 4 decades past the era.
BUT ALL THOSE PEOPLE ARE DISENFRANCHISED!
Who am I kidding. Only Democrats, especially oppressed group members, can be disenfranchised.
But not enough to elect a Republican governor, or sway the electoral votes to a Republican president. As it is, their “votes” are essentially null because the State is dominated by the coastal cites and Democrats.
Which brings up another point about “national divorce”: maybe it’s Northern and Southern California that need to get the divorce.
And maybe western and eastern Oregon and Washington. I’m sure there are other states like this, I’m familiar with west coast states.
Maybe states need to split up – and have more states in the Senate.
Who have the same political clout as the state’s Libertarians during a Prez election.
There would be a huge sea change in even DeRp politics if more states went the Nebraska route for the Electoral College
I expect the West Coast to bolt at some point. They have a different culture, not just different politics. Maybe parts of the Northeast as well (New York, Massachusetts, Vermont) It would also make things much less contentious in the remaining states.
They can call it Leftopia, with clean air and everyone with an electric car sitting in the driveway. Because the grid is down and they can’t charge them up.
There was novel called “Ecotopia”, quite popular back in the hippy days, that was essentially this.
Uh, no clean air. They’re burning free-ranch ‘liberated’ animal chips.
🙂
The northeast states are dominated by their urban centers just as much as the left coast states are. The thing about these splits is that just doing it by state would never work. That’s why the Oregon counties are voting on it for themselves only, not the other counties.
Heck, I’d like to see the Native-dominated counties vote to secede and actually form their own states.
I’d like to see the Native-dominated counties vote to secede and actually form their own states.
Are you a Sadist? Do you have any evidence that (those cultures) have ever managed anything successfully? Or is this your plan to have them finally finish themselves?
Wait a few million years, and nature will take care of that. The San Andreas plate boundary will split further north from Baja, and make an island of all of coastal California up to Mendocino. Then eventually that island will be consumed in the Aleutian trench.
Where’s Lex Luthor when you really need him?
Gee, if our nation only had significant legally defined sub-regions that in turn had substantial autonomy and internal authority at least on par with the national government.
States are a mostly artificial top down creation. The only reason it works better than the colonial borders drawn in Africa is because there wasn’t the same preexisting population.
I still think the solution is devolution to below the state level in many cases rather than state secession
Somebody flunked US history.
Cite one state where the borders were created by the residents rather than by the king, feds or some foreign sovereign.
Below state level there’s plenty of examples
Way to focus on geography and not the political arrangement.
Plus, I bet JFree has little respect for borders of any heritage.
This is dumb. We don’t have red/blue states. We have blue cities and red exurbs.
And the arguments are pretty fcking trivial, mostly because we agree on the substance, we just bicker over the details.
The difference is in the Left favoring the sorts of policies that result in a legal regime that Greenhut’s article below criticizes due to their trust in the rule of experts over law.
And the arguments are pretty fcking trivial, mostly because we agree on the substance, we just bicker over the details.
20 years ago, this might have been the case, but I don’t think it is anymore. It’s been pretty obvious to anyone who’s paid attention and isn’t in complete denial that there are two fundamentally different visions of how the country should be run. They can’t even agree on the meaning of actual words. Complaints like Mike’s that a split would be giving in to stupid tribalism presumes that the status quo is acceptable–which I daresay most people in the country would not agree with at all.
> We have blue cities and red exurbs.
Actually, we’ve always had a city/exurb split. All the way back to Roman time. There have been sitcoms based on it. What’s different now is that for the first time in history the city populations finally outnumber of the town/rural populations.
Secession won’t change this. Texas will find itself increasingly blue cities overwhelming all the rural spots. Austin already is. Houston is close behind, Dallas / Fort Worth is next. With San Antonio behind but it will get there.
What people are talking about is not “secession”, it’s a return to a federation of largely independent states under the US Constitution.
And we can address the city/rural split the way this has often been done in history: by turning cities into city states and let them sink or swim on their own.
Finally, it is incorrect that “for the first time in history the city populations finally outnumber of the town/rural populations”. City populations have outnumbered rural populations in many places throughout history.
Both sides want to spend 6 trillion a year, we know that already.
If there is a divorce will their be a custody fight over black people?
Who gets the kids?
The trans kids, or the MAGA spawn?
Pluggo hopes he does.
This account omits the results.
Buckley’s presentation seems to have been a profound failure.
Story of his life.
Project much there, Artie?
This debate was far better -on both sides – than the usual neo confederate nonsense that pervades questions like this within many libertarian circles.
On one side, everyone can acknowledge how poisonous current political incivility can destroy basic social interactions. But is secession really a solution? Likewise, it may well be true that competitive elections and partisan politics helps protect individual liberty. But if that’s the case, why are so few libertarians addressing stuff like gerrymandering etc?
Maybe you should listen to a debate before you opine on it.
It sounds like someone who caught the update on FS1 instead of watching the whole game.
“sounds like” and ‘might’, the lazy man’s final report after doing no research. When will you actually know.
This account omits the results.
Can’t tell who to hate without a cue card?
Since collectives have no existence or rights above, beyond, or opposed to the existence and rights of individuals, National Self-Determination is a right only if those seeking it want to create a free society that respects Individual Rights.
With the past history of most National Self-Determination movements as prologue, and our present cultural and political sit-rep as prima facie data, I simply don’t see a free society coming out of a “National Divorce.”
With no single Constitution and Bill of Rights as a frame of reference, individual States or regions, City-States, CHAZ/CHOPs, Warren Jeffs enclaves, or even gang-color turfs could make any form of tyranny into law. And there would be no recourse except escape, gunplay, and hoping you never have a vehicle break-down or crash landing in the wrong spot.
And maintaining national sovereignty in the modern age requires massive conventional weaponry and/or an umbrella of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC Proud-As-A-Peacock) arsenals.
Does anyone else here visualize chartruse-haired Trigglypuff Robespierres or Methuseleh-bearded Johnny-Reb Jesus-Christers with access to the most dangerous weapons Humanity has ever known and not lose sleep?
No, the simplest solution to our problems is that Libertarians just need to do a damn better job at getting their ideas across and getting their ideas accepted and implemented with the nation we’ve got. Neither Wokester Jo Jorgensens nor Von Mises skin-suit wearers nor Kook Vermin Supremacists have done the job, so the rest of us must take the idea of Liberty and, as the kids put it, say it right.
“No, the simplest solution to our problems is that Libertarians just need to do a damn better job at getting their ideas across and getting their ideas accepted and implemented with the nation we’ve got.”
How are we doing [not well]? No, we either figure out a way forward via less central government, or we progressively move toward more tyranny under “the government we’ve got.” I honestly do not see any other possibility, realistically.
And nothing last forever.
Notice I said “the nation we’ve got,” not “the government we’ve got.” Naturally the extent and scope of government has to go way down from what it is and has to be limited to it’s only moral purpose.
Allow self-determination by counties that are contiguous. Most of western NY would join western PA counties which would join Ohio and so on. Eastern Oregon and WA would join Idaho. This allows maximum segregation into red or blue countries. Those “trapped” behind enemy lines as some cities like Austin would have to move which is fair.
Makes sense.
This was the argument of slave-holders to which Lincoln said: NO political unit will be monolithically of one opinion so the only fair way to proceed is to protect even the one holdout in a state of all one opinion except for that person.
One more caucus and they will become a unified force to be reckoned with.
Article #1 – More Immigration.
Article #2 – National Divorce.
Summary; Does the USA give-away half of it’s nation to invaders?
National divorce? Maybe.
The federal government is steadily losing credibility. Nullification has already occurred with marijuana, and the same is happening with gun rights. Abortion is now a State issue [as it should be].
Cities have already refused to enforce immigration laws. It may not happen as a discreet agenda, but is happening incrementally. The more they attempt to pile on with endless regulations the more this will accelerate. If we could get around to taxation, that would do it in.
The more the federal government ignores and violates the USA’s founding-people’s law over them (the very definition of the USA) it loses credibility.
And once it’s divided/divorced what’s going to keep the Conquer and Consume mentality from dividing/divorcing it again? Handing over half a nation that is “almost” conquered and consumed is like paying ransom. It just *encourages* more of it.
Point & Case; When the treasonous politicians promised to violate the US Constitution and steal everyone a ?free? pony did that end the ?free? pony demand?
Also; An interesting consideration in all of this.. Even though the government seems over-represented by treasonous politicians they are *all* elected from tiny little spots on a map of urban h*llholes.
Perhaps the seceding talks should center around succeeding cities. Which humorously; pretty much are short of the National Theft they’re obsessed with. ( A violation of the US Constitution )
We don’t need a national divorce. What we need is to prevent the majority of the moment from imposing what they want on the rest of us on an ongoing basis. For example, if blue cities adopt disastrous regulatory policies, let the people who live there suffer whatever consequences there are. Don’t bail them out. Don’t pass laws to forbid cities from making disastrous policies. Voting with your feet seems to be working just fine as long as we don’t let the fallout from someone else’s disaster impose a duty on the rest of us. Of course that’s not going to happen any time soon as long as the two-party system maintains one simple majority or the other in power at any given time, but divorce won’t cure that either – it just ensures that one plurality or the other will continue to impose their agenda on the majority wherever they happen to reside.
I notice that “Reason Debate Month” includes a new pro- and anti-“divorce” article which is not yet open for comments. I would like to point out here that a divorce would NOT result in any increase in Federalism or Constitutionalism. It certainly would not result in more libertarian space for libertarians. It would almost certainly result in some right-wing tyrannical states and some left-wing tyrannical states. There would not be more libertarian states after a “national divorce.”
What we need is to prevent the majority of the moment from imposing what they want on the rest of us on an ongoing basis.
Democracy isn’t for the weak, but it’s the best system we have.
Yes, and “this is no world for the fragile”, right tony?
Now go get another booster before someone “coughs up a bunch of gross spittle” in your face, then go hide under your bed before a stand up comedian decides that “people will die”, or worse yet, you might have to get a job, cuz “work is misery”.
You are weak and fragile.
Article IV; Section 4
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.
That’s you leftards biggest problem. You like to ‘pretend’ a new form of government that conquers the old one. (i.e. An act of Treason).
The [WE] mob RULES ideology. Ya know that ‘collectivist’ pronoun your party is so in love with as well as the communism and socialism your party correctly aligns with being so in love with.
Democracy isn’t the goal, it’s simply a tool – the only tool left after you eliminate monarchy, oligarchy, coup-imposed dictatorships, etc. The two-party system has NOT “worked well” by any definition of functionality you can describe, except of course for the partisan politicians and their appointed officials. Certainly not for the people.
Better analogy is that 50 people are in an orgy
and they are told that they must Accept and Embrace the known VD spreaders. They are told that the line is over there, and they have no say in who they orgy with when it is their turn.
And finally, 5 of them are presented the entire bill as their fair share and told to leave without being serviced because the other orgyists are triggered by their presence.
Let the red states go, pass a bunch of laws without the help of Republicans, then reconquer them. Of course any historian will tell you that the failure of Reconstruction was that we showed too much mercy.
Blue states don’t have any guns so how would they do that?
What’s so funny is; Under Constitutional Federalism you’d get exactly what your asking for. All the red states could govern themselves WITHOUT you leftards in the National government illegally STEALING from everyone in the entire nation.
Amen!!! One of the very few times I agree with you… LEAVE the Red States alone! Stop claiming to own 80%+ of them by some UN-Constitutional “federal land” claim. Stop forcing your S.S. and Medicaide and Medicare down their throats (UN-Constitutional). Just STOP with your *National* Socialism already!
That’s all they’ve been asking for all along.
Aaah, the Hillary Clinton Reconstruction theory resuscitates
“In this view, the white Democrats who overthrew Reconstruction regimes are just bad guys: violent, racist thugs who used force and terror to implement a completely unjustified regime of white supremacy.
That’s an opinion that aligns well with the sensibilities of the modern-day Democratic Party, which includes very few white people with deep family ties in the South”
It was a weak debate on both sides. Michael Malice should have been in the affirmative. national divorce is already occuring by folks voiting with their feet. Once the reserve currency goes, what is left of a country goes with it. Two countries where lines are decided by county. Yes this means blue cities in red states but give up to five years for folks to move. Then the borders come down.
No one is asking for a national divorce.
Those speaking about it are PLEADING for one.
It is becoming very obvious to all what is coming. They seek to avoid it with politics.
They will not.
Kralizec
A rare thing but both are wrong !
If you take the Yes view you are forcing me as a state citizen who does not want separation to move — and that also assumes my whole family shares one opinion. Only a professor could be so out of touch 🙂
But ‘No” is just as bad for tacitly saying it is a valid legal question. It is not. This was settled twice in our history: In the treatment of Loyalists after the Revolution and in the treatment of non-secessionists in the Confederacy.
“National divorce” is a term used to describe the hypothetical scenario in which a country or nation would split into two or more independent entities. The concept of national divorce is typically driven by political, social, or cultural differences that create deep divisions within a country.
But as with IReland and Pakistan and Rwanda etc. it has never worked. SO it is utopian to even bring it up. In every existing society those divisions go right down to the famlly level. Hence in the Civil War there were families often that had sons on both sides.