• Introduction
  • About Ruby Red Republic
  • Contact
  • Blog

Ruby Red Republic

~ Thoughts on Red States and "Deplorables."

Ruby Red Republic

Tag Archives: secession

The “Gorbachev Moment” Approacheth

07 Sunday Nov 2021

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Alabama History, American Federalism, Federalism, Localism, secession, The Passing Scene

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

American Breakup, American identity, American National Identity, Civil War II, Gorbachev moment, Jim Langcuster, secession

Mikhail Gorbachev

Speaking as one who loves American history, the thought has occurred to me time and again: We have never been as united as we think we are. It was a major concern of the constitutional framers and, apart from a few factors in history that have created the illusion of unity, we remain a very pluralistic polity, culturally and politically, and we simply have to find a way to create new political structures to ensure we remain adequately equipped against geopolitical threats such as China but that also ensure that we don’t end up beating out each other’s brains.

If you have been a frequent reader of this forum, you are likely aware that I have come to describe all what is unfolding in the United States as our very own  “Gorbachev moment.” Recall that some 30 years ago the ill-fated refomer of Soviet society? Mikhail Gorbachev tried to negotiate a union treaty to hold things together but events got ahead of him. Boris Yetsin, president the Russian Soviet Republic, signed a compact with his counterparts in Byeloerussia and Ukraine that resulted the breakup of the Soviet state.

As this article attests, we seem to be approaching a similar impasse in the United States, reflected in the growing number of ordinary Americans who express an interest on secession.

For now, our leadership class remains conspicuously silent on the topic of secession. But the inevitable “the Emperor hath no clothes” moment inevitably will arise. Sooner or later, some prominent American, perhaps a governor or senator from either a blue or red state, simply will have to state frankly, “Something’s got to give.”

This is when the facade will crumble.

Then, pehaps, we can hope for some sort of modus vivendi that holds the country together to fend off geopolitical threats, though while ensuring that domestic  power is returned to states or, perhaps more realistic, compacts of states, that we can be assured of sufficient insulation from our increasingly malignant and consolidating ruling class.

What Follows the American Empire?

16 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Imperial Decline, U.S. Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

American Empire, California, Jim Langcuster, secession, Texas

It is intriguing and, quite frankly,  heartening, that observers on both ends of the political spectrum perceive that the American Empire is in headlong decline and that something new invariably must  follow, whether this occurs years or a few decades from now.

For me, this decline became increasingly evident more than a decade ago when California governors, beginning with moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, began characterizing the Golden state as a nation within a nation, possessing all the accoutrements of nationhood, including one of the world’s ten largest economies.

Now such affirmations almost seem routine. Legislators in the nation’s second largest state, Texas, are even considering putting a secession initiative on the state ballot – an effort that has earned the endorsement of the Lone Star State’s prominent GOP leaders and that even has piqued the interest of GOP leaders in other states.

Granted, formal secession from the American Empire is decried by elites, particularly when these calls eminate from red states. But the rhetorical cat is out of the bag. Growing numbers of pundits on both ends of the political spectrum no longer are overlooking the obvious: the American Empire is in terminal decline, much like its erstwhile Soviet nemesis some three decades ago.

As this article in The Nation attests, the telltale signs of decline and collapse are readily perceptible. Yes, there’s the inevitable leftist pablum through which the reader must wade to encounter some truly interesting nuggets, notably mention of the challenges of constructing a new civilization from the imperial rubble.

As many of us on the right and even a few on left see it, there is only one basis on which this civilizational reconstruction can occur: It must begin with smaller political entities rather than the oversized, lumbering, bureaucrarized white elephant we’re contending with now.

Crossing the Atlantic and Gaining Traction

08 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by Jim Langcuster in secession

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brexit, Civil WarII, Deplorables, Jim Langcuster, oligarchy, secession, Texit, Trump

In 2016, commentators around the world perceived that Brexit would be a political watershed event, not only in Europe but also throughout the world. Many predicted, including yours truly, that it would portend major repercussions in the United States.

This proved true. By the end of the year, the impossible had occurred: Donald Trump, the reality show star, rode a populist backlash all the way to the White House in November, and that watershed event likely altered political dynamics in this country for decades to come.

Our ruling class predictably used the Covid-19 upheaval, not to mention, the rioting throughout the summer of 2020, to extract several electoral advantages, which, suffice it to say, seriously impeded Trump’s path to reelection – I’ll just put it that way and leave it to the reader to determine whether the oligarchy’s strategy also included outright theft. Whatever the case, the oligarchy’s actions only serve to underscore that it is as frightened of the populist upsurge as the heartland populists are fed up with their betrayal of the Republic. Trump, despite his manifest shortcomings, was able to speak truth to power for four straight years, and tens of millions of Americans have been “woke,” to borrow that obnoxious leftist term, to ruling class aims, including what they have in store for the obstreperous masses in the provinces unwilling to bend with the mythical “arc of history,” of which St. Barack spoke so fondly.

More than ever, many are fully aware of what comes next: a form of not-so-soft totaltarianism in which surveillance and social technologies, which the eager help of the Silicon Valley digerati, are employed not only to monitor but also to shape, if not regulate, every facet of our lives.

Given the fact that the ruling class, having forged an alliance with the Marcusian Marxist left, is now firmly in control of the commanding heights of American culture, tens of millions of heartlanders have come to the stark realization that secession or, barring that, civil war, are the only means by which their cold grip can be prized off the levers of power.

Neither option is all that appealing, though the least unpalatable one, secession, is gaining traction among the Right. While our ruling-class agit/prop arm predictably dismisses these efforts as “far-right fringe talk,” the embrace of a once taboo subject really is palpable, even remarkable. Consider this: In a relatively brief time, secession has garnered the endorsement of the majority party of the largest state in the Union, Texas, and the GOP leader of another Western state, Wyoming, recently conceded that he and other Western party leaders are watching events closely as they play out in Texas.

Secession, it seems, no longer is fringe talk.

It seems the predictions were right all along. Brexit really was a watershed event. Calls for radical decentrism as a response to the rapacity of entrench elites not only have crossed the Atlantic but are also being warmly received.

Imperial Demise

08 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Geo-Politics, Imperial Decline, U.S. Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

American Empire, Deplorables, Irredeemable, Jim Langcuster, Justin Raimondo, secession

Photo: Courtesy of By Tyler Merbler from USA, Wikimedia Commons

One of the greatest intellectual odysseys of my lifetime was reading most of the so-called “prophets of the Old Right,” who, in the years leading up to the Second World War, offered a searing critique of American interventionist intentions and all the risks to constitutional liberty that these entailed. (Incidentally, one of the best surveys of this all but forgotten circle of talented men is the late Justin Raimondo’s “Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the American Conservative Movement,” written roughly a quarter century ago and still, fortunately, available in electronic form.)

As this splendid column, which appeared recently in antiwar.com, observes, the American Republic, at least, key elements of it, always was predisposed toward imperial ambitions, though these aspirations, thankfully, have have always garnered substantial opposition, which seems to have reached a fever pitch as we near the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.

Honestly, given the last twenty years of U.S. geostrategic setback, is it any wonder that this union finds itself in its currently politically and economically depleted state? For that matter, is it any wonder that secessionist sentiment is on the rise in the country’s largest blue state (California) as well as red state (Texas)?

There are so many ways that 21st century America resembles the declining imperialist powers of the past, not only in the way it deals with its client states but also the way it administers domestic policy.

As self-described “radical-centrist” political commentator Michael Lind has argued, this nation’s northeastern mercantilist class, which harbored imperialist aspirations from the very beginning, has regarded most of the rest of the country as an economic outsourcing zone since this union’s inception. And today these elites retain their increasingly tenuous grasp on power by stoking tribal animosities of ordinary citizens, much as the British elites were accused of exacerbating religious division in 19th century Ireland to stave off Irish secessionist sentiment.

Meanwhile, the decline in the vast American heartland is painfully evident. For the past five years, I’ve seen it firsthand as I’ve returned to my native corner of northwest Alabama to care for ailing parents and then to close our their estate following their passing. Recently, my brother, preparing our parents’ home for sale, discussed the state of the current economy with a local man who was undertaking pest treatment on the house. He expressed surprise that neither of us had been confronted with meth addicts who typically occupy vacant homes, even in fairly upscale middle-class homes.

For now and despite the growing chorus of discontent, the empire lumbers along, but for how long? The demonstration that ultimatley resulted in temporary occupation of the U.S. Capitol,which our oligarchic class and its agit/prop predictably have portrayed as full-scale insurrection comparable to the 9/11 attacks, likely serve only as a portent of what is to come. But for now, the very classes denigrated as deplorable and irredeemable by our Mandarin class and characterized and surveilled by our national security apparatus as budding insurrectionists, in come cases, even enthusiastically, supply a vastly disproportionate share of the country’s enlisted ranks. And this raises the question: In this increasingly class-ridden juncture in history, how long will these decent young men and women continue to play along with this charade?

This remains an open question.

Thoughts on America’s Protracted Cold Civil War

02 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blue States, Jim Langcuster, Red States, secession, wokism

TeenVogue is not the most intellectually sophisticated of publications but the fact that the prospect of secession, stemming from growing concern over this nation’s protracted cold civil war, is now being openly discussed by the mainstream left speaks volumes about the increasingly intractable divisions in this country.

My only problem is with their argument that a blue-state republic – or, as the case may be, peoples republic – somehow will be inherently more democratic, economically successful, humane, and progressive, not only culturally but also in terms of its commitment to scientific and technological advancement.

How can they be certain of that in light of the turmoil that has transpired almost exclusively within blue regions of the country within the past few years?

In what is turning out to be the one of the most significant demographic shifts in U.S. history, Americans, apparently fed up with the dysfunction of blue-state social and economic policies, are fleeing the most prominent blue states in droves and relocating to solid red states such as Texas and Montana, which are associated with lower taxes, lower costs of living and traditional notions of law enforcement

For that matter, can blue states even bank on the certainty they will remain paragons of scientific and technological achievement? How can they be so certain of this when far-left ideology of wokism is making what appear to be steep inroads into blue-state political and social institutions?

A crisis that transpired at a relatively obscure public liberal arts college in Oregon, The Evergreen State College, portended much of the social upheaval in the Pacific Northwest that would follow in 2020. What transpired there hardly represents an affirmation of Enlightenment principles of open inquiry and free speech. In fact the cultural struggle on this campus arguably played a significant role in the strengthening of the Intellectual Dark Web, a loose league largely comprised of center-left scholars who, while embracing many of the values of the progressive left, still affirm the Enlightenment legacy.

Much of this ideology of wokism by its own admission espouses a turning away if not a outright rejection of many of the ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment.

For years, eminent secularist scientists, notably Christopher Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have heaped scorn on the fundamental/evangelical red heartland. Yet, the culture of this region is steeped in a religious faith, a uniquely Ametican brand of frontier evangelical Protestantism, which is based on Enlightenment principles. And while the culture of much of the vast red heartland has tended to reject some aspects of 19th and 20th century rationalism, notably evolution, the region by no means is unequivocally opposed to the values and the legacy of the Enlightenment.

Yet, red state America increasingly is being drawn into what seems like a protracted struggle with its blue-state counterpart, one that has been characterized as a cold civil war and that sooner or later could morph into something resembling a full-fledged hot civil war. And much of this animosity is being stoked by elites in the blue regions of the country who regard their counterparts in the vast red heartland as intellectual obscurantists.

Yet, when one considers the issues in deep context can we really bank on the guarantee that a blue-state republic (or republics) will emerge from this protracted struggle as the most viable governing model?

Given the growing affinity of the mainstream left for the woke left, how can we be certain that a blue-state nation will prove a successful nation, one that maintains a fidelity to the Enlightenment legacy, which vaulted America and the rest of the West into the front ranks of successful nation-states?

Toward a Bipartisan National Divorce Settlement

22 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Electoral College, national divorce, secession

Contradictory political and cultural trends seem to be playing out all around us.  For example, CNN’s Don Lemon, who remains, bar none, the dumbest and most untalented individual in cable news, urges the left to pack the courts as a first step toward abolishing the Electoral College.

It apparently has never occurred to him and to many others among our national commentariat class that the Electoral College underscores a vital truth: that the Constitution preceded the Union – or, to express it another way, that there is no such thing as a Union without safeguards such as the Electoral College.

Indeed, one could make case that Constitution and the Union, far from comprising a symbiotic relationship, are one in the same. The original 13 states joined the Union out of assurance that their sovereignty and independence would be protected. The remaining 37 that that joined over the next two centuries did so with the same convictions.

Lemon’s entirely uninformed argument about packing the federal courts partly with aim of subverting the Electoral College is tantamount to dissolving the Union.

With prominent news anchors calling for the dismantling of a vital safeguard of liberty, perhaps it’s not that surprising that another liberal columnist has  weighed in favorably on secession as a means of resolving this failing polity’s intractable divisions.

“Seventy percent of Americans are angry at a political system that is just not working for them,” writes  Chuck Bonfig, a small businessman and freelance photographer.

It seems that growing numbers of Americans on both ends of the political spectrum are coming to terms with what has heretofore been a rather unpalatable truth: that this country is simply too damned big and culturally diverse to be governed on the basis of an antiquated 100-year old Wilsonian centralist model.

Facing up to National Disunity

08 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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.

White Animosities, Black Foils

05 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

BLM, Civil War, regionalism, riots, secession

Observations by Blair Nathan and other outstanding thinkers on Twitter have prompted some thinking on my part regarding the intractable divisions that seem to have have overtaken the country in recent years.

Yet, I don’t think that these divisions are of recent vintage at all but rather that they reflect deep historical animosities and rivalries that stretch back centuries and that predate colonial settlement.

Indeed, based on a long and fairly extensive reading of British and American history, I believe that because of these deep-seated animosities one could make the case that the North and South never should have confederated in the first place.

The recent upheavals in this country, which were only exacerbated by Trump’s 2016 electoral success, simply have placed these divisions into deeper perspective.

Within the last few years, I and other close observers of our national divisions have been surprised by the increasing candor with which some academic and professional political pundits have expressed this rather unpalatable fact, notably columnist Michael Malice in The Case for Secession, written shortly after the 2016 election.

These regional amosities may even be traced to genetic factors rooted in the ethnic cultures of the British Isles – a theme deftly explored by historian David Hackett Fischer in Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America.

A scientific exploration from this perspective of longstanding political division was supplied recently by Scientific American.

From the very beginning, the incipiently mercantilist Northeast, stemming significantly from the region’s East Anglian and Puritanical ethno-cultural roots, regarded itself as entitled to rule the country and was enraged that the agricultural South had garnered what they considered an unfair competitive advantage. In time, they contrived a brilliant strategy, feigning outrage over Southern slavery as a means of obfuscating their ambitions to become the young republic’s cultural and political hegemon.

The Civil War and a series of cultural and political flashpoints in the century and a half that followed have only served to underscore that the United States remains a deeply sundered country, though 20th century material prosperity and two world wars were effective in obfuscating for a time these profound  and intractable differences. But within the last half century, these deep-seated divisions have been exposed again in unusual raw form and conceivably could lead to a conflagration that even could rival the Civil War under certain  conditions.

Negotiating the American “Gorbachev Moment.”

31 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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,

Toward a Detoxified, Humanized Federalism

28 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, Devolution, Federalism, Southern History, The Passing Scene, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Brexit, Demassification, Devolution, Federalism, Great Britain, Jim Langcuster, secession

pluribus-unumMuch like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square protests, the result of the 2016 European Union Referendum — Brexit, as it’s commonly called — will be one of those memories that stay with me the rest of my life.

Late in the night as the Leave vote amassed an insurmountable lead, I reflected on how Brexit likely would constitute a wakeup call not only for the European Union but possibly for the American Union too.

I was motivated as much as I was inspired by the results.  The next morning, I got busy setting up a devolutionary weblog as a forum for discussing how the Brexit outcome likely would affect federalism in the United States.

Reflecting weeks later on how the results of the referendum had galvanized Scottish nationalist sentiment, I also began to wonder if Britons would take up a serious discussion of drafting a constitution for a new federal British union encompassing England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. And this led me to speculate about whether such a union of sovereign states ultimately would inspire one or more American states to demand a return to the principles of state sovereignty enshrined in the Constitution, particularly in the Tenth Amendment.

Sclerotic, Dysfunctional American Federalism

Brexit should have been regarded as a wake-up call for all Americans.  Indeed, American federalism is arguably just as sclerotic and unresponsive to present-day needs as its European Union counterpart and perhaps equally as imperiled.

Challenges to American Federalism

Some of the maladies associated with American federalism date back as far as colonial times, while others have emerged considerably more recently. The deep cultural chasms stemming from the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam Conflict some 50 years ago certainly have contributed. But so have more recent technological advances, namely, the demassification of media that followed the expansion of cable television within the last 50 years and, more recently and significantly, digitization, particularly social media.

These new media, despite all the good that they have produced, have added an extra layer of complexity to our cultural and political discourse. For better or worse, they have enabled growing numbers of Americans to self-organize into a myriad of subcultures.

Demassification has also compounded the challenges of our current federal model. In the face of this demassification, our highly centralized and sclerotic federal system has only grown more unresponsive, unworkable and even toxic, contributing to the deep regional and cultural divisions, particularly as they are expressed at the national level.

Some readers may regard such disparaging talk about our federal system as shocking.  After all, many Americans tend to regard our Constitution and the institutions and mechanisms that developed out of it as truly singular, if not beyond reproach.  To characterize these vital components of our constitutional system not only as unresponsive but even unworkable comes off sounding, well, downright un-American, if not treasonous, to many.

Deep Cultural Cleavages

Yet, the time for a frank dialogue about the inadequacies of our federal system is long overdue.  American federalism, despite its many notable successes over the last almost quarter of a millennium, has never managed to compensate fully for the deep cultural cleavages that have challenged this country from the very beginning.

Author and columnist Michael Malice was right and, I would contend, rather courageous, to argue that one part of the country, which could be broadly described as the cultural and political heirs of Puritan New England, have spent almost a quarter of a millennium trying to impose their vision of the American Experiment on the part of the country that traces its cultural and political legacy to Jefferson and that could be broadly characterized as the South.

He even argues that America was never that united a nation in the first place. Even in those rare times when we have enjoyed a measure of ideological unity, we have seldom marched in cultural lockstep.

And why should that come as a surprise?

The Failures of Centralized Federalism

Ponder this fact for a moment: The United States now possesses a population of 300-plus million people spanning a continent-sized country, the fourth largest in the world. Yet, we are governed on the basis of a badly antiquated federal model conceived a century ago by a progressive-minded political scientist named Woodrow Wilson, our 28th president.  He and other academics concluded that the country would be better off divesting states and localities of many of their traditional responsibilities, entrusting these instead to a central government manned by technocrats steeped in the emerging insights of social science.

Even today a few proponents of this centralized model would steadfastly contend that the wisdom of these reforms were affirmed by the degree to which they guided us through two world wars, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement.  In the interest of time and space, I’ll defer that topic for a later date.  Suffice it to say that this model is showing its age in the highly diffused and decentralized economic, political and cultural environment of the 21st century.

America’s Oldest Cultural Impasse

Yet, as Malice stressed in his column, the deepest and most intractable problems associated with American federalism stem from the longstanding regional rivalry and animosity between the political and cultural heirs of New England and the South, two regions with competing visions of the American Experiment.

The fact that New England emerged as the nation’s most culturally preeminent region after the Civil War should surprise no one.  Historical research has revealed that New England was the most literate region on the planet following American independence.  Its emphasis on mass education, particularly higher education, afforded the region immense intellectual and, ultimately, material advantages over the agrarian, slave-holding South and parts of the emerging American Back Country.  And even today, this region and other sections of the country directly shaped by its cultural and political vision continue to project their aspirations onto the rest of the country, particularly the South.

To be sure, the South, despite its statesmen supplying the theoretical foundations for many of the founding principles of this country, not to mention, the fact that seven of the first ten U.S. president were Southern, was encumbered by an slave-holding economic system that impeded economic diversification and, as a result of which, provided Southern political elites with less incentive to educate the region’s farming and laboring classes.

The South’s economic disadvantages proved disastrous over the long run. Following the South’s defeat and economic dispossession after the Civil War, New England and its regional offshoots emerged as the nation’s unrivaled cultural and political hegemons.

If one good thing besides the end of slavery followed this disastrous outcome, it was how defeat provided an impetus for the defeated and economically prostrate South to reinvent itself. One even could argue that the South owed its New England counterparts a debt in terms of its being forced to abandon an economic system that had sapped its intellectual and economic potential for some two centuries.

Lessons from Ireland and India

Yet the story is a bit more complicated.  The case can be made — and has time and again throughout U.S. history by Southern political leaders, academics, and writers — that certain traits bound up with the New England cultural legacy have also worked to exacerbate American unity as much as they have mitigated them.  Virtually from the founding of this country, the cultural heirs of England, many of whom comprise the core of this nation’s current ruling class, have tended to regard the South as the nation’s problem region, fit, in a manner of speaking, only to don the dunce’s cap and to sit on a stool of everlasting repentance.

As they see it, the South comprises the central, defining core of the worst aspects of the American cultural legacy, reflected in gun ownership, religious dogmatism and reactionary conservatism.  And, predictably, this animus has sparked a reciprocal reaction not only in the South but in other so-called red-states, many of which not only share significant cultural affinities with the South but also lay equally strong claims to the Jeffersonian legacy of strictly limited government.

Speaking as an amateur student of history and particularly of 20th century nationalist movements, I’ve always found it remarkable that this cultural animus never sparked enduring nationalist sentiment in the defeated, post-war South comparable to what emerged in Ireland beginning in the late 18th century — or, for that matter, India, in the 19th century.

Whatever the case, I think it behooves Southerners and, for that matter, inhabitants of other red states that share strong ties to the Jeffersonian political tradition to reflect on all of this constructively.

History has demonstrated time and again that conquest and economic dispossession are not one-way streets. Even the inhabitants of conquered lands sometime derive immense cultural, material and even political benefits over the course of time.

Many a contemporary Irish or Indian citizen would concede a considerable debt to the British colonial legacy.  Deep historical scars remain, yes, but despite all of this, they credit their former British hegemons with a few things of estimable value: a national communications and transportation infrastructure as well as a legal and parliamentary tradition, which provided both aspiring nations with critical facets of nation-building. These factors contributed immeasurably not only to a united Ireland and India but to their becoming singularly successful parliamentary democracies.

Southerners likewise owe their New England cousins a measure of debt.  New England’s intellectual and material advantages not only proved instrumental in defeating the South but also were major factors that forced the region over the course of time to undergo much needed economic diversification.  But even before the war, New England’s rich religious legacy also left an indelible mark on the South and much of the Back Country.  Indeed, much of the impetus behind the evangelical religious revivalism in the South and the rest of the American frontier were incubated in New England.

Well-Articulate, Vibrant Regional Identities

No doubt about it: Every region of the country, even the relatively disadvantaged ones, have benefited from American federalism.

Yet, this doesn’t obviate the fact that we now regard ourselves as a deeply sundered and increasingly embittered nation, increasingly divided by religion, culture and politics. Indeed, we have arguably grown even further apart within the last couple of years following Donald Trump’s electoral upset.  And this division is exacerbated by the very nature of Wilsonian model of centralized federalism.  Each side of the great political divide in American, blue and red America, still harbors hopes that they ultimately can harness this centralized federal model to impose their will on the other.

As Malice stresses, this has prompted growing numbers of us to ponder the unthinkable: the merits of breaking up this big, increasingly unwieldy federation into smaller, more manageable, and arguably more humane political entities.

Indeed, if an increasingly restive, assertive California has demonstrated one thing , it is that the South’s preeminent Founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were right all along.  Even at a time when America was overwhelmingly Protestant and culturally British and thoroughly wedded to a single language, these two men categorically rejected centralized federalism on the basis that a country as large and diverse as the United States simply could not be managed centrally.  For his part, Jefferson even occasionally wondered out loud whether liberty ultimately would be best secured across this vast continent through an aggregation of smaller republics, all sharing common cultural and political affinities, all pledged to securing the blessings of prosperity and liberty for their citizens.

In the midst of all these wrenching, seemingly intractable divisions, we are being challenged to return to questions that once preoccupied our Founding Fathers.

We are being called upon to search for ways to detoxify and humanize our federal system. But how?  How do we best govern ourselves in an age of sweeping media demassification?  What political relations are best suited to securing liberty and fraternity among Americans of diverse backgrounds stretched across a vast distance?  Are these relations best secured by some version of Madisonian federalism — a large republic encompassing smaller republics — or are the times calling for a more radicalized, Jeffersonian view?  Has our current political union grown so large, so diverse and so ungovernable that we would be better off living in smaller federations, each of which arguably would be better designed and equipped to serve human needs?

Some readers may regard this last question as needlessly cynical and unpatriotic, if not downright treasonous.  But I would argue that engaging in a frank discussion now about the future of our political association may better ensure that we avoid a disastrous impasse, if not a breakup, further down the road.

Yes, I believe that the cultural and political divisions in this country really are that deep and wrenching.

We must find a way not only to detoxify American federalism but also to humanize it.

 

 

← Older posts

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • June 2018
  • March 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016

Categories

  • Alabama History
  • American Education
  • American Federalism
  • American History
  • Brexit
  • Censorship
  • Christianity
  • Conservatism
  • Devolution
  • Federalism
  • Geo-Politics
  • Imperial Decline
  • Localism
  • Mainstream Media
  • Nullification
  • oligarchy
  • Patriotism
  • Red-State Faith
  • secession
  • Secularism
  • Southern Athletics
  • Southern History
  • The Passing Scene
  • U.S. Politics
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Ruby Red Republic
    • Join 26 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Ruby Red Republic
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...