Divided America: is it time to dissolve the union?

“Marjorie Taylor Greene has a dream,” said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. The Georgia congresswoman, once a fringe figure but now one of the most influential Republicans and a close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has declared that it’s time for a “national divorce”. She wants “red states and blue states” to go their separate ways, liberating conservatives from “disgusting woke culture”.

Greene thinks the post-divorce states could share an army, but determine their own policies on guns, elections, LGBTQ rights and other issues. Maybe Greene was “just trolling”, said Bonnie Kristian on the Daily Beast, but the idea of a national divorce is “more popular than you think”.

‘Peaceful dissolution’

In a 2021 survey, two-thirds of Southern Republicans said they’d support regional secession, as did 47% of West Coast Democrats. And is it really such a “terrible idea”? Given the size of the US and its “deep political animosities”, a “peaceful dissolution” of the union might lead to “better representation and more amicable politics”.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

Actually, yes, it’s an “insanely bad idea”, said Wilfred Reilly in National Review. During our previous flirtation with secession in the 1860s, there was a clear geographical distinction between Confederate and Union states. No longer. For all the talk of the gulf between red and blue states, only a handful slant more than 60% in either direction.

In red states, there are invariably two or three big, Democrat-voting cities. Look at Greene’s native Georgia, said Patricia Murphy in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. We have a GOP governor, but voted for Biden as president and have elected two Democratic senators. “Whose house would we stay at on the weekends when the national divorce is final?”

‘Cultural pressure’

It’s the Left’s refusal to “accept a truly diverse nation” that has many of us hankering for divorce, said David Harsanyi in the New Hampshire Union Leader. Liberals use the courts, the federal government and cultural pressure to try to “homogenise” the ways Americans “think, speak and live”. Then they cry “dictatorship!” when someone like Florida governor Ron DeSantis pursues a conservative agenda.

For all the howling on both sides, said Chris Stirewalt on The Dispatch, the reality is that most Americans today “live the way they want to live, where they want to live”, surrounded by like-minded people. The “divorce crowd” say we need to separate ourselves, but haven’t we essentially done that already?