With the outcome of the recent election, accompanied by credible reports of cheating on a massive scale, fresh in everyone’s minds, conservatives are searching for a remedy, any remedy, that they can apply to. President Trump is doing everything in his power to fight for accountability, transparency and justice, but, as usual, he has little support from establishment Republicans who are scrambling to secure some semblance of power in the face of a Biden/Harris administration and Democrat controlled congress. Thus abandoned by too many of their self-serving representatives and “leaders”, conservatives are frustrated and angry enough to consider some rather extreme solutions, regardless of the consequences. One idea that is floating around quite a lot on line, on the air, and in private conversations is secession. It should go without saying that the complexities of secession could fill any number of books, but that doesn’t mean there is no value in taking a brief look at what one or two aspects of secession could mean for our nation.
On the surface, secession sounds very appealing, especially to the residents of red states. Tired of the abuses they endured under the Obama administration, sickened by the behavior of the BLM and Antifa crowds, and discouraged by the lack of support from the Republican establishment at the federal level while President Trump was attacked on every side and hindered from implementing his America First agenda, what could be better than severing ties from the corrupt, bureaucratically bloated and top-heavy, fiscally irresponsible, and seemingly irredeemable federal system? Texas alone has the tenth largest economy in the world. They could easily stop sending tax dollars to subsidize freeloaders, cut regulations to encourage business, secure their own borders, and subsequently enjoy greater levels of freedom and prosperity and serve as a model for other like-minded states. Where is the downside?
Setting aside the complexity mentioned above, the downside can be summed up in two words: Russia and China. The combined economic and military power of the United States is all that stands between Russia, China, and the freedom and security of the rest of the world. The economic impact of secession on the United States would be staggering. A loss of just three or four red states could easily pull four trillion dollars or more from the economy. The military impact would be no less dramatic. The same three or four states would remove hundreds of bases and their accompanying personnel and weapons from the collective arsenal, depleting our military of critical strategic and tactical resources. The power vacuum created by a United States weakened by secession would leave the field wide open for Russia and China to enter and dominate. It is unlikely that the remaining Asian and European powers could resist without the US to reinforce them.
Not only would the rest of the world be vulnerable to Russia and China, a fragmented United States would be incapable of standing against either remaining superpower, let alone both. Even if a new confederation of red states were to rise and successfully band together economically and militarily, it is highly unlikely that they could resist the might of such powerful foes, particularly if any of the remaining states opposed them. A military invasion would not be necessary for Russia and/or China to subject a fragmented North America to their wills, but any such invasion would eventually result in defeat, a defeat made more bitter by the the realization that China only possesses their economic and military power because we gave it to them, freely, without coercion.
Barring secession, what recourse, then, is open to conservatives? Better minds than mine have dwelled on this question at length, but, at least one solution is floating around the same venues as above, and is worth considering and developing: namely the assertion of individual and states’ rights under the ninth and tenth amendments. As mentioned above, a number of conservative states wield substantial economic power. It is time for them to assert that power and reject the types of damaging policies implemented during the Obama administration, and that we can expect under a Biden/Harris administration. How this might work is beyond the scope of an article like this, but, again, others have already done the heavy lifting here. Conservatives can and should evaluate these proposals and act on them. Secession is not necessary to reign in a wildly out of control federal government and protect the citizens of this still greatest nation in the world. Yes, conservatives need to act in order to protect their, and the nation’s, interests. But that action cannot and must not undermine our collective economic and military strength. We need both if we are to continue to stand for freedom, not just here, but everywhere in the world.
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