The stark differences between ideological factions in the United States are, to me, intractable.  As factions, they will never again lock arms, sing Kumbaya, and collectively do what’s in the best interest of the nation as a whole, irrespective of what they, individually, may need to give up to achieve that end.  Why is this?

I’ve written elsewhere (here and here) about the forces at work for the past sixty or so years to undermine the values of America for the prior 200 – things like civility, respect, honor, creativity, inquisitiveness, industry, and, perhaps most significant, community.  “Community” I define as a collection of individuals who share basic values for living. We have no more community in the US, even within single neighborhoods.  Some significant fraction of practically every neighborhood in the US now finds itself as “outsiders” – aliens in the technical sense of the word.  They’re not at “home” because they no longer share the values of the majority of those around them.  This is most assuredly not a race or ethnicity issue.  It is an ideology issue.

So, having lost national community, we now find ourselves partitioned ideologically into (at least) two fundamentally incompatible groups – those who identify as the highly illiberal “progressives”, and those who identify as traditionalists – Americans committed to traditional American values.

So what should incompatible, contentious groups do to benefit themselves?  Separate themselves: remove themselves from each other.  And that’s my proposal.  We need to be (at least) two different nations with different governments, different morals, different goals to be accomplished, different educational standards, different tax structures, different foreign policy – the whole nine.

How this gets done is quite a different matter.  I suppose individual states could secede into another nation, thus removing themselves from the reach of the US government.  People wishing to become citizens of the new country could move to one of its secessionary states.

Or, individual citizens could renounce their citizenship in the US and declare it to the newly formed nation, thus removing the state boundary limitation.  This idea, though, would likely be thwarted by the force of the US in commanding “residents” of its states to comply with whatever order it might issue.  Who knows what kind of atrocities it might elect to impose on these “illegal aliens”.

Of course, there’s another method; one which was tried in the 1860’s by the slave-economy states.  There is no point in entertaining a violent rebellion against the power of the United States.  That would be simply a death wish.  The futility of such a thing isn’t based on the admission that some key skirmishes couldn’t be won.  The futility of such a thing is based on the fact that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the “other US” aren’t going to change their minds or values or ignorance.  Why fight an enemy who in its enduring ignorance sees themselves in the right — as ushering in a new Utopia for themselves?  What are you going to do, kill them all?  They’re ignorant (thanks to their teachers and upbringing), but not intrinsically evil (except, perhaps, for their leaders).

So if the US is in any form to endure the next twenty or thirty years, it will have to do so as a fraction of its current self.  The new nation will have to form, chose its leaders, establish its boundaries and trade relationships with the old US and others, and articulate its values and aspirations as a world community member.  Too bad it has to end this way.