TAP Symposium: No National Divorce

The dissolution of the United States will not happen with a bang, but a whimper, as we slowly drift apart. Yet, there is still time to prevent our collapse.

The American Postliberal Symposium: Saving the American Union

The American Postliberal is pleased to present a symposium in consideration of how to solve our crisis of national unity, in light of the recent film “Civil War,” directed by Alex Garland. We firmly believe that a civil war is not only unlikely, but that a “national divorce” is unwarranted and would be destructive to the American way of life. Therefore, the question of how we maintain the common good and national cohesion in a time of great polarization is of the utmost importance. This week, we will explore the thinking behind the film, the probability of national disunity, and finally, why maintaining our union is critical to the postliberal political project. Read the second essay, “No National Divorce,” by Wallace White, below.

With the crisis at the southern border and the news that Texas will put up resistance to President Biden’s wishes to cut the barbed wire and fencing, tensions between the federal government and state governors are flaring up once again, This is not new in American history, however. This follows a long line of incidents in American history that reflects a larger conflict, and a dire worst-case scenario that we must avoid at all costs.

By design, the state governments are obligated to make laws concerning their own citizens that are not enumerated by the federal government. Our framework of federalism makes perfect sense for a nation committed to individual liberty and limited government, as we have been…until recently.

The shifting politics of the time are not struggling over mere policies like “how much should we tax” or “what’s the best way to build infrastructure” (although these debates still happen on the surface). We are fighting over the soul of the nation and what it ought to fundamentally believe.

Our political struggle takes on a quasi-theological character, battling over the national myth and whether or not it is a righteous example of our forefathers we ought to emulate and improve upon, or an evil, corrupt, and utterly irredeemable history of violence, oppression, and imperialism. 

This spiritual fight, in many ways, has shaped the conflicts between the federal government and state governments we see today. State governments have grown increasingly bold as to defy the federal government’s wishes, and the federal government, on occasions in which a Republican occupied the presidency, have become increasingly wary of enforcing their will upon the states. Yet, when Democrats control the presidency, they will stop at nothing to subject the American people to their will.

This has been no more obvious than in the national fight over immigration. The recent news out of Texas is just another example. Fights over sanctuary cities took on a similar, antagonistic, and openly defiant character that signal a worrisome future for the United States.

Taken to its logical extreme, a state openly nullifying federal law, like South Carolina in the 1830s, may not cascade into a great conflagration like the American Civil War. The conditions of the 1860s and the situation today have a few key differences.

For one, states back then had a much stronger legal case of their ability to leave the union. Today, in the aftermath of their treason, new laws have prevented the voluntary secession of states, and it has held firm since the war.

This is why no states would dare secede today, and it will likely never happen. Those who champion a “national divorce” will be left wanting, and their ideas relegated to the fringes of the history of this political moment. In some ways, the real question is if Americans have the strength to get off the couch and fight a civil war, and that is why such scenarios are in themselves unlikely.

Instead, I want to envision a realistic worst case scenario that, in my view, very well could be a path the United States takes in this tumultuous time. This should not be taken as posing this as an absolutely certain prediction of what is to come, or an endorsement of national divorce. This scenario to remind ourselves what could become of our nation if we let our collective spiritual and psychological division persist.

A dis-United States of America might play out as follows:

States may continue this pattern of unconcern for federal law, and choose to ignore it more and more. Overtime, states will contradict federal law to such a degree that they become de-facto nations in themselves. The souls of each state become fundamentally opposed to each other by virtue of differences in governing philosophy and law.

This, on its own, is the most likely how a national divorce would look. A quiet divorce as we sleep in different bedrooms in the same house. The disillusion of the United States will not happen with a bang, but a whimper, as we slowly drift apart.

This scenario is only one of many that are possible, and one that we would be obligated to avoid if we want to create a political community of virtue, and value the heritage of our nation.

Unfortunately, a Republican president would be all too eager to enact this vision and a Democrat president would, to the best of their ability, not let it happen at all. Thus, a nation with two competing visions of the good — laws that include abortion up until birth and total bans on the practice, for example — is unsustainable.

Yet, America is not just a “soul” in the abstract. Most importantly, we are a physical nation with its own history and culture. Whether we like it or not, we are one country, and we must solve our problems, together. No amount of separation will heal the current divide we face or the tensions to which it inclines us.

The mission of postliberals is, therefore, to address the ideological and spiritual dissonance of America. Postliberalism understands that a true political community means potentially questioning and re-orienting the liberal notions of liberty and equality we have all come to adore as red-blooded Americans. But this is just the beginning.

It is clear that in order to avoid the many disastrous paths that America can take, we need a national healing of the soul. We need to not let our collective psyche reach a breaking point, where states become like the multiple, divergent personalities of a troubled, mentally-ill man that cannot help but try to destroy himself.

To heal ourselves from drifting apart, we must come together and must first conceive of politics as it has been for all of human history, the project fundamental to collective human flourishing, not a mere vehicle to permit individuals, and states for that matter, to do as they will. This means taking as our starting point that our nation is one body.

Our national soul was one that was steeped in the English traditions of communal townships and the individual’s freedom to pursue what is truly virtuous. The foundation of America, in some sense, stems from the Puritan’s persecution in England, where a government actively suppressed their attempts to live what they believed to be the true virtuous life.

The Puritans were running from a persecution that they had no hopes in changing via the system, and instead sought to create a political community that embodied what they believed to be the virtues of good society. The difference in our time, however, is that we can change the system.

The revitalization of America lies in that attitude, that the government can and should reflect the best virtues that encourage and facilitate human flourishing. We perhaps do not have the capacity of starting completely over, like the promise of freedom that a colonial of old might enjoy, but we have the opportunity to rebuild the face of our nation.

We must build something that rests on the natural law that is written on the hearts of all. Building a political community comes naturally to man, if we are not distracted with abstractions and principles that seek utopia.

We must ask ourselves what makes our nation truly so exceptional. The United States is exceptional in theory, but all-too-human in practice. All the same lessons of history apply to us, and that means our politics cannot hope to achieve the impossible fancies of the liberal mind, which include a Civil War and national divorce.

Instead, we must look to what has held society together in the past (religion, family, community, the common good), and create an American way that respects those axioms of good society. Union will only be possible and beneficial if we stop entertaining ideas in a vacuum and look to what has worked in the past and build it into our American image.

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