The Temptation Of Secession
There are days when I wonder if secession, which was a moral imperative to stop in order to end slavery during the U.S. Civil War, wouldn't make sense now when slavery is no longer an issue.
The Republican Party and Democratic Party are more deeply divided from each other than any post-Civil War division in the U.S., although gridlock in the federal government has masked these divides a little. The Americans in Red States live in different cultures and realities from Americans in Blue States. Republican are why we "can't have nice things" in the United States politically.
Unity Prevents Military Conflict
National unity brings quiet, unappreciated benefits as well. The mainland of the North American continent is divided between just three countries whose vast inequalities in power have arguably contributed to lasting peace.
Since the U.S. Constitution was adopted, the War of 1812, the Indian Wars, and the U.S. Civil War have been the only significant military conflicts fought on the territory claimed by the United States on the mainland.
The U.S. has been involved in armed conflicts around the world very frequently in its history, from Tripoli and the Barbary pirates, to many conflicts in Central America and Latin America under the Monroe Doctrine (continuing through Grenada, Panama, and peace keeping in Haiti), to more recent military engagements in Europe in World Wars I and II, to the Pacific in World War II, in Korea, in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and in the Middle East and its vicinity as far as Somalia and Afghanistan. Indeed, national unity is one of the reason that the U.S. has had the military resources available for expeditionary military action all over the world.
Critically, after the U.S. Civil War in 1865 more than 159 years ago (and Reconstruction that followed) and the final stages of the Indian Wars in the late 1800s, there has been almost no fighting which has taken place in the continental U.S.
There have been only two episodes since the U.S. Constitution wad adopted in 1789 of foreign invasions that reached U.S. soil: the War of 1812 and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941, which was 82 and a half years ago. And, the invaders in each of those cases: Britain in the War of 1812, and Japan in World War II, are now close U.S. allies.
If what is now the United States in the mainland of North America had been balkanized, at a minimum, each of the balkanized states would have had to have devoted considerable military resources to defend themselves from each other. In all likelihood, they would have fought some major conventional wars against each other in the mainland of North America.
For example, in World War II, of the Lincoln had not forced the Confederacy to rejoin the Union in the U.S. Civil War, the Confederacy might have sided with the Axis powers, while the Union might have sided with the Allies, leading to far more military conflict on the North American mainland and near the Atlantic Coast of North America.
Unity Secures Human Rights
National unity has also thwarted or resulted in remedies for the worst human rights abuses of the American South and other backwards places in the U.S.
The North has forced the South to protect the civil rights of African Americans, has forced the Southwest to protect the civil rights of Hispanics, and has forced Red States to protect the rights of women, children, and of Native Americans and immigrants, more than states in these regions would have otherwise.
How Does Migration Tip The Political Balance?
These questions aren't just "top down" matters to mandate from on hight. The way that the political divisions in the U.S. play out are profoundly influenced by choices made and lobbying from businesses, especially big ones, by civil society organizations, and by the internal migration and political activism decisions of individual people and families.
On one hand, if blue state people migrate to a red state, they can change the politics of that red state, shifting it to be first purple and then blue.
Multi-state and multi-national businesses can also lobby against policies that make it untenable for them to continue to operate in a red state.
On the other hand, migration can further the political divisions between states. If conservatives migrate from blue states to red states, and liberals migrate from red states to blue states, this can solidify red state-blue state political divisions.
Many businesses can, if they don't like red state or blue state policies respectively, move elsewhere. For example, many tech companies are moving away from Austin or choosing not to expand to Texas, because of bad red state politics and laws.
Migration from blue states to red states has tipped Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado to the left. Migration of liberals to big cities in other states, especially from the rust belt and farm communities, has tipped Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa to the right.
Migration of retirees to Florida and Arizona has been a mild right leaning political influence since retirees are more conservative than the general public, but balanced by the fact that retirees still aren't assimilated members of Southern culture or the culture of the rural Old West.
There has been a lot of net migration from northern states to the South and Southwest, especially out of the Midwest and Great Plains, and to a letter extent out of the Northeast, although even then, the migrants to the South and Southwest are largely sticking to big cities that are culturally bluer than other place in those mostly red states. This trend may be running its course, however, as "natural" disasters and global warming and increasingly bad conservative policies in these states make them unattractive.
It isn't clear which trends will predominate in the longer run.
Florida seems to have crossed a tipping point from being almost a northern state in the South, to being crazy conservative. Virginia and North Carolina are being pulled by D.C. related suburbanites in Virginia, and tech oriented development in both states, from being firmly red states to purple states. The shift left in Georgia has been driven by professionals and managers moving to Atlanta which is a regional economic hub.
Ohio is vastly more conservative and economically depressed than it was when I grew up there, and there have been shifts to the right all across the rust belt.
Beyond Geography
The U.S. Civil War failed to end once and for all the underlying political and cultural divisions that remain dominant in U.S. politics today, even though it did effectively end slavery itself and largely took succession off the table as a political tactic.
The trouble is that as the meme quoting General Grant above predicts, is that the current first order political, moral, and cultural division in the United States only sometimes breaks neatly along state lines.
Red states still have "enlightened" enclaves, like Austin in Texas. Blue states like New York and Colorado still have large swaths of conservative, mostly rural areas.
Secession isn't an easy solution to a divide that runs along urban-rural lines as much as it does along state lines, even if it was an available political tactic. And, honestly, while the U.S. Constitution doesn't specifically provide for the possibility, I don't seriously doubt that Congress and states seeking to secede could by mutual agreement authorize a "divorce" that would let some states secede.
One of the reasons that there is an urban-rural political divide is that highly skilled and educated workers receive much higher economic premiums for their abilities in big cities than they do in small towns and rural areas, making the higher cost of living in urbanized areas worth the price.
In contrast, less skilled workers without college degrees receive much smaller economic premiums in big cities over small town and rural areas. But they still have to contend with the same higher cost of living that the highly skilled and educated workers in big cities do.
Of course, the mere fact of living in a place with higher population density and greater diversity also seems to influence people's political views causally.
Every U.S. state of consequence needs big cities to function, however, and this leaves many even very red states with comparatively liberal urban centers.
Generational Shifts And The Long Run Culture War
Juxtaposed against the regional shifts are the generational shifts. Across the U.S., younger voters are much more liberal on most social issues, and are less religious, than older voters.
The left has been pretty much consistently winning in the culture wars since the Civil Rights movement. Absent political tactics that can thwart the political will of the people in a conservative direction, the U.S. will eventually, almost by default, drift to the left over time.
Joe Biden, a long time drug warrior, is taking the lead in decriminalizing cannabis at the federal level. Many red states have legalized either medical marijuana or both medical and recreational marijuana.
Mass incarceration is easing in red states as well as blue states.
The original segregationists (Biden himself started his career on opposition to public school desegregation plans in Delaware), no longer advocate for de jure segregation or bans on interracial marriage, although they now oppose affirmative action and DEI programs that exist to counteract and remedy racism. In the 1960s, in contrast, even Martin Luther King, Jr. was reluctant to press for interracial marriage.
About 85% of Democrats and 75% of independents, and large shares of young people even if they identify as Evangelical Christians, support same sex marriage, even though less than half of Republicans do (down from a narrow majority a few years ago), although conservatives are vigorously trying to make transgender people into scapegoats and are fighting a rear guard action to keep gays in the closet. Not all that many years earlier, even liberal Democrats were afraid to push for more than half-measures like domestic partnerships and civil unions.
The percentage of Republicans who have no religion is higher than the percentage of Democrats who did not that many years ago (white Protestant Christians are now increasingly scarce in the Democratic party coalition). The overall ranks of the non-religious have surged.
Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision was a huge setback for reproductive rights and have left us with a country deeply divided on abortion, which pregnant women are moving with their feet to overcome. But grass roots voters in state initiatives are pushing back on that, for example, protecting abortion rights in Kansas, and legislators in Arizona backtracked from the reinstitution of a very strict archaic abortion law that Roe v. Wade had invalidated.
Likewise, the U.S. Supreme Court starting with its Heller decision has taken steps backward on policies to end gun violence with gun control.
Of course, generational political divides can't be addressed with secession.
Sharing A Country
Federalism is one way to find compromises in countries with geographically based political division. But federalism doesn't provide a very good solution to balancing the needs and desires of big cities v. rural areas and small towns, or those of older and younger generations.
How do people who are so starkly divided in their view of the facts of reality, their norms, their culture, and the policies that they prefer balance their competing needs in a way that is tolerable for all involved?
Our federal institutions encourage politically segregating migration as a solution, but we don't have great power sharing alternatives.
In theory, one could devolve law making further by vesting more power in more local governments, as the Swiss do, and less in state governments. But this isn't a great solution in the case of many laws because the underlying reality involves huge intrastate and interstate ties with everyone having to share a single national or statewide context for the most part.
Also, while Swiss do well enough with three dozen cantons with authority similar to that of U.S. states in a country the size of a typical U.S. state, that overcomes small scale divides with compromises, carving the U.S. into several hundred states with state-class authority doesn't seem like a viable solution.
The difficulties involved with the necessity that people share a country and the states that they are in across political divides when we have few institutions to support that is part of the reason why the current political situation is so volatile.
