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Tag Archives: American secession

A Church, a Country and a Crack Up

19 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

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American secession, George F. Kennan, schism, Thomas Naylor, United Methodism

The late Thomas H. Naylor of the Vermont independence movement (Photo Source: Second Vermont Republic.)

Speaking as a member, albeit a rather nominal one, of the theologically and culturally beleaguered United Methodist Church, this article, published recently in the New Yorker, makes for fascinating reading at several levels – all the more fascinating because it is written by an elite columnist from a center-left perspective.

I personally find it interesting for three reasons: first, because it underscores how the United Methodist Church’s divisions, which at this point will end in a formal, negotiated breakup, merely serve as a bellwether for deepening, if not intractable, divisions at the national level. Recall that a similar breakup of the Methodist Episcopal Church foreshadowed the breakup of the American Union in 1861.

The second reason is because roughly a quarter century ago, a prominent United Methodist cleric as well as a university professor anticipated these schisms in a book they jointly authored titled Downsizing the U.S.A. At the time of publication, the authors were fellow Duke University faculty members: the Rev. William Willimon, dean of the University Chapel, who would later serve as bishop of the North Alabama United Methodist Conference, and Dr. Thomas Naylor, a Duke University Economics professor, who, following his retirement, relocated to Vermont and became active in the Vermont Independence Movement.

The third and final reason is because this article reflects how growong numbers within our national clerisy and commentariat are discerning the deep and likely unbridgeable divisions increasingly becoming evident in the United States. The country really appears to be careening toward some form of breakup, which is why it behooves the nation’s political leadership in both political camps to work out some kind of contingency plan to mitigate the effects – something that the United Methodist leadership, faced with its own impending schism, set out to do and apparently has effectively achieved.

To revisit a theme that I have raised time and again in this forum, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was faced some 30 years ago with a similar set of circumstances in his country. In fact, he undertook a frenetic effort to negotiate what he called a new Union Treaty in an attempt to stave off a Soviet crack up, though he was overcome by the rapid pace of events.

Perhaps there is still hope that our political elites can engineer some sort of new federal compact whereby states and/or regions still can share a common monetary and defense policy.

Indeed, facing a similar set of conditions a few leaders in post-Brexit Britain, notably former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have conceived a similar proposal whereby the traditional nations of Britain – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – essentially would function as sovereign states, though ceding a number of general powers to the government in Westminster.

As turns out, a few very perceptive thinkers among the U.S. political class perceived these fissures forming as far back as thirty years ago. One of them was a famous diplomat and renowned Sovietologist, George F. Kennan, who was predominantly associated with Democratic administrations. He discerned this approaching political impasse in his 90’s.  


In his valedictory memoir, written in his 90’s and published in the early 1990’s, Kennan envisioned states with strong cultural and political affinities, merging into what he called “constituent republics,” which would wield the bulk of domestic policy. He also advocated the same status for a few of the country’s largest cities – NYC, Chicago, LA, etc. 


In many ways, this concept resembles former British Prime Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s proposal for Britain, which basically was conceived as a means of staving off Scottish secession following the Brexit outcome.  


As with the Brown proposal, the general government would be left to handle larger national issues, such as monetary policy and defense. 
I remember Kennan’s proposals causing a brief flurry of interest and for a while this nonagenarian even was featured in the national talkshow circuit. 


However, sometime later, Kennan became associated with Thomas Naylor, whom I mentioned earlier, becoming a vocal proponent of the Vermont Independence movement. Many of his peers found this surprising, needless to say. 

In the end, proponents of radical decentralization and even secession may, like Kennan, be forced to look beyond attempts at national brokerage to grassroots efforts in which individual states and perhaps even municipalities act unilaterally.

Whatever the case, many of us who have observed these trends perceive an impasse fast approaching, one that may outstrip the ability of present-day political elites to assist with brokering a deal.

Facing up to National Disunity

08 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

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American nationalism, American secession, American Unity, Centralized States, secession

Photo: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

It truly is fascinating how even the blue-coastal commentariat are discerning and even embracing the merits of secession. At this rate, public awareness of long-term unsustainability of American unity will soon be regarded as the proverbial elephant in the room.

I have been fighting this battle with my very modest resources more than a quarter century now.

As endeavors go, it hasn’t always been pleasant. My father, a retired U.S. Army Reserve Lt. Colonel and staunch American nationalist, became so exasperated with my Jeffersonian/secessionist views at one point that he jumped out of his seat, flailed his arms and called me a traitor. We eventually made up.

Today, I feel largely vindicated. In fact, I am more convinced now than a quarter century ago that the moral and intellectual underpinnings that have sustained American unity, however tenuously, for the last almost quarter millennium are fraying rapidly. As this author, who writes from an unmistakably center-left, blue-coastal perspective, readily perceives, many of us already have reached a kind of intellectual separation with the rest of the country. And it likely will not be too much longer before formal calls for a political solution to these deep cleavages emerge.

Yet, as I have argued time and again, the pace of events may outstrip our ability to react quickly enough. We are fast approaching what I have come to call our Gorbachev moment – the point at which we must improvise provisions for what was previously considered unthinkable, a national breakup – though, unlike the ill-fated Soviet president, we haven’t begun to conceive anything resembling a contingency plan.

Why Even Pretend Anymore?

03 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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American secession, Andrew Cuomo, Jim Langcuster, national division, Thomas Jefferson

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo

Question if the day: Why do we still pretend to comprise the same country?

We’re constantly being served up accounts by the mainstream media about how the right specializes in fomenting division, though New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo seems to spew more venom than any other public official official in America and in ways that only exacerbate these deep divisions.

His most notorious stunt of late is his warning to the President of the United States that he would be wise to carrying along an armed guard to walk the streets of his state’s major city

As memory serves, this is the same governor who said that there is no place in New York for pro-lifers and the same city that has featured artwork depicting red-staters in the vilest of ways.

All of his poisonous rhetoric simply serves to underscore that various regions of the country have evolved different views on governance and even personal morality. And, hopefully, more Americans ultimately will be forced to conclude, however reluctantly, that this divergence will be settled in only in one of two ways: through centralized tyranny or undertaking radical decentralization up to and including secession. We seem to be rapidly approaching an inflection point.

Indeed, with each passing day I marvel at how prophetic Jeffersom has proven. He perceived that a continent this size simply was too vast to accommodate a single republic and predicted that a myriad of republics ultimately would emerge. He was right, just off by roughly a quarter millennium.

Negotiating the American “Gorbachev Moment.”

31 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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American Federalism, American secession, Gorbachev, secession, Soviet Coup

Thousands rallying sound the Russian “White House” in Moscow in defense of Russian sovereignty during the post-Soviet “August Coup” in 1991.

A perversely interesting read, and, frankly, I find it fascinating that this scholar made no mention of Mikhail Gorbachev’s furious efforts to negotiate a new union treaty that would have transformed the post-communist Soviet Union into a union of sovereign states.

The fact is, the United States is also fast approaching a similar inflection point – its own Gorbachev moment – the point at which it dawns on most everyone that existing constitutional arrangements simply are not equipped to handle the stressors playing out around the country. This partly stems from the fact that the hard left is banking on full-blown hegemony and has little use for the Madisonian protects that once safeguarded American liberties.


Meanwhile, the right, for it’s part, is so invested in flag waving and nationalist rhetoric that it can’t summon the courage to admit that everything is falling apart and that the most viable solution lies in the radical decentralization of federal power that would better address all of the cultural rifts playing out in this country. So what we face, as a result, is an impasse, a dangerous impasse, that resembles in some respects the late Soviet Union. Either we find some constitutional means of dealing with these cleavages, namely by returning power to regions of the country with strong cultural and historical affinities, or we face something even more horrendous: authoritarian leftist political and cultural hegemony or civil war or outright dissolution, with all the domestic and geopolitical upheaval this entails.


Yet, I would venture to day that most of us on this group are roundly convinced that the feds will never acceded to this, so the ultimately solution will be states, clusters of states, acting unilaterally, much as they did in 1776,

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