When Secession Becomes Thinkable

 From The Abbeville Institute:

When asked whether a state can constitutionally secede from the United States, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia brushed the question aside, saying the matter was settled by the Civil War.

He was wrong. A Zogby poll in 2018 found that 39 percent of likely voters, including 42 percent of Democrats, believed that states have a right to secede, while 29 percent were not sure. That means 68 percent of voters were willing to consider what for Scalia was unthinkable. In recent years, some legal scholars also have come to realize they cannot let the Civil War define their thinking about secession.

One of these is Frank Buckley, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. In his recent book he argues that America is coming apart. “Washington has become the seat of a sclerotic society of special interests, hobbling the rest of us with wealth-destroying rules,” he writes. “The extremism has gone mainstream, and the oracles of respectable liberalism now embrace the vilest left-wing extremists.”

Among those extremists are Black Lives Matter and Antifa, shock troops of a Democratic Party that has embraced the mantra that America is systemically white supremacist. These leftist thugs are allowed to deface and topple monuments to America’s complex national identity while police are ordered to stand down. The two political parties are divided not only by policy but by territory: states, cities, and counties are either red or blue. “In our politics we’re already two nations,” Buckley observes.

When two people are about to come to blows, it is best to separate them. Secession could do that for a deeply dysfunctional and hate-filled America. The question is whether it can be done constitutionally and peacefully. (Read more.)

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