The Issue With “A National Divorce”

For the past couple of years, a concept of a “national divorce,” or a form of secession in which the United States as we know it is split into multiple nations, has come back into the public discourse. Back in March, a poll found that around sixty six million Americans supported the idea after it was mentioned by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. After Barack Obama won re-election in 2012, petitions started appearing in all fifty states from critics of the President to get their state to leave the nation. This is not to say that calls for secession have been exclusively right-wing,
Louis J. Marinelli used the progressive nature of California to drum up support for his “Yes, California” movement after the 2016 Presidential Election resulted in Donald Trump’s victory, for example. After the 2004 Presidential Election, a popular meme proposed that all of the Kerry voting states become part of the “United States of Canada” while those who voted for Bush would be part of the nation of “Jesusland.”

However, although those in support of secession pretend it is some magical solution to the issues of the United States — Tom Woods even has a new book out called National Divorce: The Peaceful Solution to Irreconcilable Differences — but reality shows this to be much more complicated than many realize.

The biggest issue with this notion is that no state is made up of entirely Democrats or entirely Republicans. The famously Republican state of Texas has the city of Dallas, and the famously Democratic state…