America must turn to that family-centered, community-based society that is anchored in God and a morality based on His law. Now is the time to gather the nation around unifying principles, not shatter it into millions of individualistic shards.
Some traditional-minded Americans use a horrible metaphor to describe an outcome they desire for the nation. The metaphor is divorce, and the outcome is a separation of a State from the American Union.
Proposing a national divorce is like demanding a figurative abortion for some unwanted social problem. Divorce and abortion are never solutions, literally or metaphorically. They will always end badly. The children (real and figurative) will always suffer.
However, this attitude reflects a spirit of desperation at the present state of affairs. One immediate catalyst for this call is the federal government’s ideological dereliction of duty for failing to protect the border states from an invasion of illegal immigrants.
Other states also complain about desperate situations that call for dramatic action, whether it be socialist legislation, abortion, ecological regulations and classroom indoctrination. People desperately want out of these situations and now clamor for divorce.
The Call to Separation
Liberals inside the federal government and society seem to be doing everything possible to encourage outrage and separation. They definitely stand to benefit.
A national divorce would help the left in the deadlock of the country’s stalled cultural war by taking conservatives out of the national debate. It would let conservatives shatter the national institutions that liberals have been unable to fully control. Vast sections of the nation would be handed over to liberals without a fight in the process of a division.
Thus, as liberals provoke, some desperate conservatives are taking the bait.
Solutions that Always Ends Badly
Activists like the recently divorced Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene say Texas and other states similarly treated should secure a national divorce from America. They say it need not be a nasty affair but an amiable, no-fault divorce settlement, agreeing to part ways and divide assets.
Let the other states do what they will and even destroy themselves. The red states (and later counties or cities) will stay red and determine their separate destinies.
The calls for separation and secession are growing as Americans find it ever more difficult to live together in peace. Indeed, five million people have migrated from one state to another in one of the largest population displacements in American history.
Walking Away from the Problem
The call for an amicable divorce appeals to a mindset that refuses to delve deeply into problems. It reflects today’s throw-away society, where anything can be discarded at will. When a relationship goes wrong, one can simply walk away from it and try again with someone else.
The divorce solution springs from a liberal society where the goals of life are to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. The minute suffering or sacrifice enters into the picture, the tendency is to flee and find new pleasures.
The national divorce promoters believe the same can be done with states or nations. When the national scene becomes afflictive and works against the individual’s interest, it is time to separate rather than confront the problems.
Such a selfish decision refuses to make a moral judgment about whether something is right or wrong and, instead, simply effect an escape. Such individuals do not care how others live and its impact upon all society as long they can continue their lives unimpeded.
A Commercial Relationship
To many Americans who hold this secession position, the notion of a national union is almost a commercial one. Heavily influenced by the Enlightenment’s individualistic thought, this sector of the public has long seen the bond of citizenship like that of a shareholder or co-op member.
Under such an arrangement, everyone is full of patriotic enthusiasm when things prosper. However, resentment, entitlement, and rancor enter in times of crisis. Then, people look for handouts rather than solutions. No one is willing to sacrifice for others.
A Pervasive Mentality
This selfish, co-op mentality affects both the left and right. Both share the liberal conviction that everything, including government, exists only for the individual’s pleasure and self-interest.
It is a regime where all pleasures are judged equal. The freedom (or license) to pursue one’s pleasure is more important than the actual goal. For conservatives, pleasure often means the practice of virtues that favor material benefits. For others, pleasure consists of gratifying the darkest passions.
What is happening in America today is a spectacular clash where each one’s pursuit of happiness now comes at the expense of the other. The only way each can seek ever more consuming pleasures is by shattering America, freeing her from the restraints of past orthodoxies.
Reframing the Debate
This disconnect is what is wrong with the national divorce solution. It consists of letting all parties, left and right, pursue their different sets of pleasures separately.
It fights liberalism with more liberalism. Everyone enlists under the same liberal banner of gratifications—some judged good and others wrong.
There is no concern for the common good. There is no objective notion of good or evil. Thus, society disintegrates since no unifying principles and morals exist to hold things together.
As long as the debate is framed this way, there will be no restoration of a moral order but only an ever-growing descent into chaos.
The Fiction of Liberal Liberty
The liberal paradigm of each seeking pleasure lies at the foundation of modernity. However, it has always been a fiction. The liberal regime has never been about allowing individuals to do what they want. It is always about destroying the obstacles that prevent people from doing what their unbridled passions desire.
The Real Target Is Christian Civilization
The target of the liberal left is what little remains of Christian civilization and its moral structures, whether it be the Catholic Church, morals, metaphysics, identity, sex, pronouns, borders, language, or linear logic. These daily reminders of a Christian order must be eradicated.
What better way to accomplish this task than to have conservatives shatter the political unity of those fighting the culture war on a national scale and ghettoize the reaction into separatist enclaves?
Reframing the Debate
This debate must be reframed to reflect the real fight. It must consist of the defense of those perennial values that Russell Kirk called the “permanent things,” those norms of courage, duty, honor, justice, and charity that owe their existence and authority to something higher than pleasures or self-interest—indeed to a transcendent God.
Americans must challenge the false paradigm that life’s purpose is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering inside a shareholder, co-op model of society.
America must turn to that family-centered, community-based society that is anchored in God and a morality based on His law. Now is the time to gather the nation around unifying principles, not shatter it into millions of individualistic shards.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is “Union Soldiers in Combat” (1895) by William B. T. Trego, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
