SECESSION? PUMP THE BRAKES.
Earlier this week, headlines started popping up in my social media feeds telling me that a “top conservative writer calls on states to consider secession.”
In the age of outrage, I initially assumed “top” was a hyperbolic term, opportunistically used to describe the career of some lower-tier partisan pundit as an excuse to promote their secessionist talk in an attempt to attract more link clicks from aghast readers.
Upon seeing more and more posts referencing those secessionist musings, I caved and clicked. To my slight surprise, I learned that the “top conservative writer” was, indeed, of that caliber: Erick Erickson.
Erickson recently founded a site called The Resurgent after leaving the RedState blog, of which he was editor-in-chief and CEO. He also hosts a radio show, has contributed to CNN and other networks, and has bylines in some of the most notable American news outlets, including The New York Times (and the Times Free Press).
So yes, he’s of the “top” caliber.
As for his secessionist ideating, though, he needs to pump the brakes.
Essentially, Erickson’s argument, published in an article titled “Let’s Consider Secession,” is that our current red state versus blue state map composition, compounded by continued threats to the concept of federalism, makes secession an acceptable course of action. He also says the “political left is becoming the American ISIS.”
I won’t address that third point. It’s ridiculous, over the top, and as it turns out he walked it back a bit in a subsequent post.
As for federalism’s crisis, I do share Erickson’s reservations. An ever-bloating and increasingly oafish Washington. D.C., is a true burden to individual freedom, and its intrusion into local, state and individual matters is a headlong assault on our founding principles.
But Erickson’s grounds for secession-fantasizing rest primarily on our deep political divide. And his remedy, that red states go their way and blue states go theirs, is elementary at best.
For starters, secession based on today’s ideological landscape assumes (mistakenly) that today’s political sentiments, confined within red state and blue state borders, will remain static. That’s not necessarily the case. People change their minds frequently, swap political allegiances and adopt new philosophical stances.
Moreover, our country was created in such a manner that differing opinions can cohabitate. Our founders themselves were not of like mind on every matter, yet they created institutions that were meant to absorb differences, ensuring that if the federal government is to move in a certain direction, it does so only after clearing all required checks and balances.
(Here I pause to note two, often related, major threats to this system. The first has already been addressed: the undercutting of federalism. And the second being the ballooning of the administrative state.)
Our institutions were designed to move slowly and methodically — a fact that confounds progressives — so any substantial alterations require serious deliberation. The idea is that while humans are often given to whims, our nation’s course will not be.
And as threatening as those on the other side of the political divide can sometimes appear, our institutions are still standing and functioning, pushing back against impulsive whims.
Two examples that might give conservatives hope are 1) this week’s Supreme Court rulings protecting free speech, and 2) the fact that many of Barack Obama’s achievements made outside of actual lawmaking — read: executive orders and international “agreements” — have been undone by President Trump’s own signature.
The very loud, painfully antagonistic and increasingly violent impasse we’ve arrived at today is nothing new. It’s ahistorical to think otherwise.
America has escaped tough jams in the past, and a commitment to our institutions will help us through this one … together.
Contact David Allen Martin at davidallenmartin423@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @DMart423.