The Patriot Post® · Is It Time for a 'National Divorce'?

Divorce is ideally a measure of last resort for a marriage irreparably broken. Infidelity, abuse, or abandonment are typically the Christian and biblical metrics for tearing a marriage asunder — or, rather, acknowledging that the offending party has done so. In modern America, however, the popular choice has been reduced to “irreconcilable differences.”

Which understanding, if either one, fits our present political moment?

“We need a national divorce,” argued Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.” She added, “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s [sic] traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

It’s not the first time the subject has come up on these pages or that Greene has floated it. Perhaps ironically, Greene’s husband filed for divorce last September, calling their marriage “irretrievably broken.”

In any case, Greene’s call brought predictable howls of outrage. Is she advocating civil war? huffed the responders.

Other (former) Republicans thoroughly rejected the idea. Maybe because of the irony that Greene’s proposal came on what some mistakenly call “Presidents’ Day” in part to honor Abraham Lincoln, former Representative Adam Kinzinger pointed to Lincoln’s war victory. “To be clear, the Union prevailing in the civil war settled this question,” Kinzinger said. “YOU HAVE NO RIGHT, or ability, to have a national divorce. This was settled. Your side lost.”

Fellow former Congresswoman Liz Cheney lectured: “Our country is governed by the Constitution. … Secession is unconstitutional.”

Cheney and Kinzinger divorced themselves from the Republican Party and sane leadership when they voted to impeach Donald Trump over bogus “insurrection” charges and then sanctimoniously participated in the disgraceful charade that was Nancy Pelosi’s J6 inquisition. As for Kinzinger’s point, yes the Union won militarily, but that’s not the same as settling the secession question legally.

Ask Thomas Jefferson. “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form,” he said in his 1801 Inaugural Address, “let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.” He was arguably advocating the voluntary union of states under the compact of the Constitution.

When one side of the American political divide has veered so far away from the “vows” of this national “marriage,” hasn’t that side already wrecked the union? What recourse does the offended side have when the constitutional union has been trampled?

Certainly, our nation is built upon compromising through what might otherwise be “irreconcilable differences.” Conservatives are never going to think that giving $500 million every year to Planned Parenthood is good or moral or constitutional. Those on the Left are never going to accept returning control of education to the states and the people rather than centralized bureaucracy in DC.

Under Joe “Unity” Biden — and, to be fair, Donald Trump and Barack Obama before him — the two biggest sides of the American political divide have become so adamantly opposed to each other that reconciliation sometimes seems impossible. There is, for example, no compromising between people who see the biological reality of two sexes and others who have parted ways with sanity itself and demand censorship of the first group. It’s hard to find a middle ground between a group that will protect our God-given right of self-defense and those who would send armed federal agents to your door to collect your firearms.

Some folks need to scrape that “coexist” bumper sticker off their car.

As a result of this division, Americans increasingly have chosen “divorce” by way of moving. There’s a reason California and New York are losing population while Texas and Florida are gaining.

Meanwhile, Republican voters increasingly want their representatives and presidential candidates to stand up and fight the culture war. Conservatives have never been the aggressors in that war, despite Leftmedia framing. We’re only ever responding to the Left’s assaults on our morals, families, and institutions, and we don’t want to keep losing.

We’re tired of the Cheneys and Kinzingers of the party who promise to fight and then team up with Nancy Pelosi. Most of all, however, we’re tired of being governed by Democrats and their allies in the deep state when they obviously hate us and everything we stand for. We’re tired of them tearing down everything our Founders and forebears built. We’re tired of their contempt for our nation.

We’d love a solution short of national divorce, which, to seriously understate things, would be unlikely to yield much good. It’s just unclear what that solution is.