Rush Limbaugh yesterday let out the “S” word: secession (see below).
Over the past few years, I have been ruminating on the topic of secession, and worried that we are essentially two different peoples heading toward it. The differences are so profound that for one to rule the public square, the other is suppressed. Our politics have become a matter of conquest as we have become so deeply divided. It’s natural for the conquered to seek separation.
How different are we? Metropolitan areas are enthralled by a relatively recent nanny-state zealotry. Everywhere else, tradition and self-reliance has a stronger grip on imaginations. It’s the difference between pleasure-seeking materialists and your local church, if you want avatars to encapsulate the two sides.
We see it more and more, and all around us. During the Trump presidency, Democrat/Lefty strongholds engaged in John C. Calhoun-style nullification of federal immigration law, which Calhoun was an 1830’s harbinger over a federal tariff.
Now, it’s the traditionalists’ turn. Licentious electoral systems in blue states, and metropolitan cores in red-leaning states, have imposed an executive branch with lefty evangelical zeal on the vast stretches outside the blue dots and the coasts. In 1860, George Templeton Strong put it succinctly when he said, “Get prepared for a hurricane!”
The simple fact is that the urban cores and urban-core dominated states has adopted an aggressive leftism in recent years. They have moved extreme left while the rest of the country has remained more true to our founding beliefs and traditions. This could be a secession sparked by a militant collectivism in like manner as the adoption of a grand theory in defense of race-based chattel slavery in the South in the middle of the 19th century would incite the first go-around. In opposition, the abolitionists were the inheritors of an emancipation that is traced back through Christianity to classical times.
I am worried. The fundamentals are present for a repeat. Indeed, if wiser heads don’t stop the leftward lurch, “Get prepared for a hurricane!”
RogerG