The National Divorce has begun

Feb 25, 2023

MTG — Marjorie Taylor Greene — is taking some heat for proposing a national divorce. She divorced three days before Christmas after 27 years of marriage. Her tweets on dividing the nation into red and blue have riled up the left, which is always riled up about something. They live to be displeased.

She laid out her case in a lengthy tweet on Thursday.

“There is a failure for many to realize Americans are giving up because they are sick of the talking heads that just complain about all the problems and politicians that never fix anything, while the right just keeps taking the beatings and abuse from the left.

“Yes, the red California that gave us Reagan is gone and that was another time long ago. CA is now like a weird communist country.

“Yes, NY gave us Trump, but Trump left NY because of how bad and blue NY is and NY is so political and corrupt now they are actually trying to throw Trump in jail.

“Yes, VA flipped red with Youngkin but it was because parents were fed up with their school boards and a trans raped girls in the girls bathroom, but Loundon County is still unchanged, so really how red is VA?

“And Matt Gaetz is right when he says our government constantly cheats on its own people with foreign countries. Marriage counseling we all need.

“Reducing the power and size of the federal government and giving more to the states in order to protect ourselves and our kids from the abusive left is actually the bold action that needs to be taken in order for the left to be able to realize how insane and abusive they have become.

“Just like the prodigal son, once the left gets to truly live in their own filth they have created without us, then they will be able to realize the error of their ways.

“Until then, most of us don’t want to be forced to accept and live in their filthy abusive ways with them anymore.”

I like her description of California as a weird communist country. Fact-check: True. I am sure that Red China does not have junkies lining its streets in pup tents or men in drag running their nuclear program.

In stolen clothes no less.

The press would have you believe that she is nuts, but a divorce is an idea almost as old as the republic. Two centuries ago, New Englanders wanted to leave the union because Virginia dominated national politics.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo wrote, “From 1800 to 1815, there were three serious attempts at secession orchestrated by New England Federalists, who believed that the policies of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, especially the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the national embargo of 1807, and the War of 1812, were so disproportionately harmful to New England that they justified secession.”

He called them Yankee Confederates.

He wrote, “These Yankee Confederates were not an isolated band of radicals. They were among the leaders of the Federalist Party, many of whom had participated in the Revolutionary War and had even helped write the U.S. Constitution. John Hancock and Samuel Adams are among the best known of the New England Federalists who, by the late eighteenth century, were reaching their twilight years. The push for secession came primarily from the younger generation of Federalist leaders, including George Cabot, Elbridge Gerry, Theophilus Parsons, Timothy Pickering, Theodore Sedgwick, John Quincy Adams, Fisher Ames, Harrison Gray Otis, Josiah Quincy, and Joseph Story, among others.”

Gerry became a vice president and Adams became president. Slavery was not the issue. Commerce was.

DiLorenzo wrote, “Clearly, the New England Federalists believed that southern politicians, who dominated the federal government, were intentionally harming the New England states. Considerable credence was lent to this conspiracy theory — at least in the minds of the Federalists — in 1807, when Jefferson declared an embargo on all foreign trade. The embargo rekindled the fires of secession that had been cooled by the Hamilton-Burr episode. The Federalists commenced planning a convention that they hoped would lead to the creation of a northern confederacy.”

Two centuries later, polls show the revival of the idea.

Politico reported on October 6, 2021, “A recent survey by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia found that about 50% of Donald Trump voters and 40% of Joe Biden voters agreed to some extent with the proposition that the country should split up, with either red or blue states seceding.”

Of course, with the exception of MTG and a few others, no one in Washington wants secession because that would reduce their power.

J. Gordon Hylton of Marquette wrote, “One of the central constitutional questions in pre-Civil War America was the extent to which the national government could regulate slavery. (As Virginian John Marshall observed in a different context, ‘The power to regulate is the power to destroy.’) Obviously, the greater the involvement of Southerners in national affairs and the greater their control of the institutions of governance, the greater their capacity to protect the institution of African slavery.”

John Marshall was right about so many things that you can see why my alma mater — Cleveland State — removed his name from its law school. Totalitarians cannot rule the future without obliterating the past.

Elaine Godfrey of The Atlantic wrote of MTG on Thursday, “The Republican representative’s words prompted the outcry you’d expect from Democrats and columnists who questioned both her loyalty to the country and Republican leaders’ cowardice in refusing to rein her in. But Greene’s ideas are not as radical as some might be inclined to think. First, because what she’s calling for sounds not unlike Ronald Reagan’s idea of federalism. Second, because Greene is hardly the first person to suggest that the political party in power is making the United States wholly unlivable. I’m old enough to remember all the liberals who swore they’d move to Canada if Donald Trump won in 2016. (They didn’t!)”

The idea of another civil war seems preposterous in this age in which so few men are armed. Federal law from 1792 to 1903 required white men to own firearms to defend the country. During the Civil War, Lincoln and a Republican Congress extended the law to include black men.

One reason Democrats may not want a civil war is the nukes and stealth bombers are in the red states. As Biden said, “If you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

Red states have both.

But Joe Blow overlooks the obvious. The national divorce is taking place. People are voting with their feet.

Last year, 9 of the top 10 states in population gains were red states — led by Florida.

7 of the top 10 losers were blue states — led by New York.

The Los Angeles Times reported on February 15, 2023, “The California exodus has shown no sign of slowing down as the state’s population dropped by more than 500,000 people between April 2020 and July 2022, with the number of residents leaving surpassing those moving in by nearly 700,000.

“The population decrease was second only to New York, which lost about 15,000 more people than California, census data show.”

That was the third consecutive year of a population loss by California, ending more than a century of growth. But illegal aliens have propped up its population for over a decade, masking the loss of actual citizens.

Forbes tried to put a smiley face on the Escape from New York and other weird communist countries.

Forbes reported on February 14, 2023, “There are several reasons why some states grow faster than others. One is climate. Studies find that people have been moving to places with milder winters and more sunshine for several decades now. Colder Midwestern and Northeastern states with harsh winters have an inherent disadvantage, which helps explain population loss in New York, Illinois, and similar places.

“But climate is not the only factor. After all, California is known for sunshine and mild winters, yet it lost 343,000 people last year. Meanwhile, Idaho, Utah, and Montana all gained people.”

However, the point of the story was economics. Forbes said, “Places with more economic freedom gained more new residents on average, and state economic freedom scores explain one third of the variation in domestic net migration across states. The same relationship is apparent when looking at economic freedom and population growth, as shown below. On average, states with higher economic freedom scores experienced faster population growth from 2021 to 2022 than states with lower scores.”

But political freedom matters even more. DeSantis calls Florida, “Where woke goes to die.”

I disagree. It is where freedom comes alive.

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