Dear readers, for the purposes of this disquisition, we’ll call her the Congresswoman from Georgia’s 14^th District. She has, of late, distinguished herself by calling for the secession of red states from the Union, or something akin to that. It is unclear what she’s talking about in this instance, as it is in many others, but amazingly, what she had to say raises an interesting point in our nation’s political life:

Is the professional right wing simply giving up?

“We need a national divorce,” the congresswoman from Georgia’s 14^th District tweeted on February 20. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrats’ traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

It sounds like she’s calling for secession, doesn’t it? The Civil War gave us our greatest – or worst – example of what happens and why when it comes to states seceding from the Union. The main issue cited by the South as the reason they were seceding in 1860 was slavery, specifically a fight within the Congress over the westward expansion of slavery.

America was growing, and the South desperately wanted slavery to grow with it so southern elites could maintain the death grip they held on their social order, which verged on feudalism, and means of wealth accumulation, which was to reduce most labor costs to zero by enslaving people to do the heavy work for them. I purposefully omitted the word “Black” from that sentence, for it was a certainty that should slavery have been allowed to spread into the western territories and subsequently into western states, that Native Americans living there would eventually have been enslaved, too, alongside of Blacks.

There were other so-called states’ rights issues as well. The Southern states held that they should be free to interpret the Constitution as they saw fit, free from a centralized government which included the Supreme Court, essentially nullifying laws they did not want to adhere to, which was one of the major problems with the Articles of Confederation, abandoned in favor of the Constitution.

Do you detect a central factor here? It is that the South wasn’t going to win these fights legitimately within the governing structure of the United States, nor did they hold a winning hand in what we would call the polls, the South being far more sparsely populated than Northern states. Essentially, then, secession can be looked on as giving up: The South said, if we’re not going to win the political battle over slavery, then we’ll take up arms and win it that way.

The day after the Congresswoman from Georgia’s 14^th District called for secession, she went again to Twitter – for where else do these sorts of arguments belong? – and tried her best to explain that she wasn’t calling for a Civil War. She wasn’t even calling for a disassembly of the Union, she tried to explain – I ask you to attempt to understand what she was talking about yourselves, because I can’t:

“Why the left and right should consider a national divorce, not a civil war but a legal agreement to separate our ideological and political disagreements by states while maintaining our legal union,” she tweeted.

Do you see an answer to her question “why” in there? I don’t. Abandoning “why” completely, she went on describing what she wants:

“A national divorce would require a much smaller federal government with more power given to the states. Hence, we would solve our debt and spending problems immediately.”

Aha! There it is, the old Southern obsession with wealth accumulation any old way they want to do it. They don’t want to spend their hard earned dollars on stuff like school lunches and pre-natal and post-natal health care, because that would run up a debt. They want to allocate the spending of tax dollars the way they see fit, while of course “maintaining our legal union” so the tax dollars keep flowing from blue states to red ones.

What they would spend those tax dollars on gets very interesting: “We would immediately alleviate the need for departments like the Department of Education. States would have full control of their public education. Education would look different all over the country. In red states, there would be varying degrees of more traditional public education, charter schools, homeschooling, technical training, and college and universities. Red states would likely ban all gender lies and confusing theories, Drag Queen story times, and LGBTQ indoctrinating teachers, and China’s money and influence in our education while blue states could have government controlled gender transition schools.”

Whatever the hell “gender transition schools” are. The point being, red states don’t want to pay for them. What do they want to pay for? Listen to this:

“Red state schools would bring back prayer in school and require every student to stand for the national anthem and pledge of allegiance [sic] while blue states would likely eliminate the anthem and pledge all together and replace them with anthems and pledges to identity ideologies like the Trans flag and BLM. Perhaps some blue states would even likely have government funded Antifa communists training schools. I mean elected Democrats already support Antifa, so why not. Of course interstate trade, travel, and state relations would continue.”

And what would be free to continue to trade and travel between the states? Let’s hear from the Congresswoman from Georgia’s 14^th District:

“Red states would not have to abide by climate cult lies. Red states would be completely free to build and use fossil fuel energy for their citizens. Oil, natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear power would very likely be growing strong energy sources for red states. Red states would be free from complying to green new deal regulations, but obviously all states would still have to comply with certain environmental protective requirements. We love freedom to consume the energy we choose but not pollution, and just to be clear carbon is not pollution.”

See there? In this disunited union of red states freed of obligations to blue states, the wind would continue to blow across the states, the air would continue to be shared among red and blue states, but not to worry: There won’t be any pollution because the Congresswoman from Georgia’s 14^th District says so.

“Tragically, I think we, the left and right, have reached irreconcilable differences,” she tells us. One of those differences is apparently over product placement on the shelves of – wait for it – Walmart stores: “However, in red states, they could have different rules about store product placement on national store's shelves. In red states, I highly doubt Walmart could place sex toys next to children's toothbrushes."

Thank goodness. Just as we can’t have our children catching Trans from drag queen story hours, we can’t be brushing our teeth with tooth brushes all covered with dildo cooties or vibrator vibes.

Not to worry, however. The Congresswoman from Georgia’s 14^th District has it all figured out:

“Imagine if America decided to just go ahead and have a national divorce. Hollywood elites and celebrities and all the brainwashed leftist women who watch the nasty women on The View, men who identify as women, and Democrat voters who suffer from the lifelong debilitating disease Trump Derangement Syndrome they caught from CNN wouldn’t have to see, much less tolerate deplorables anymore. They could live in their safe space blue states, own nothing, let their government decide and control everything, and most importantly protect their fragile minds from being shocked and insulted by those of us on the right who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Then Americans could choose which way, left or right, provides them with the best quality of life, and we don’t have to argue with one another anymore.”

See that? No more nasty arguments means no more nasty votes conservatives hate losing so much. Oh, by the way, she’s got the whole voting thing figured out, too. If you want to move from a blue state to, say, the Congresswoman’s 14^th District in Georgia, you lose your right to vote for five years.

She doesn’t specify what would happen to your right to vote if it’s the other way around, moving from a red state to a blue state. But I think we can guess what her plan is for that circumstance, too.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

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