If an Authoritarian Trump Seizes More Power, Should Blue States Secede?

Yes!

I am a lawyer and political scientist. If I answered this question solely as a lawyer, I would easily say so. The United States was (were it?) Born as the separative movement from the British Empire. It was not a “revolution” when we understand the word today. George Washington and his armies had no design in London; Those we call “patriots” just wanted to get out of the existing control frame. By taking a replica from the founding of the United States, the blue states can legally separate from the union.

Apparently the most audacious phrase in Declaration of Independence It arises in the first sentence when it plans to speak in the name “one people”. Any historian – and, as suspected, most of those in Philadelphia gathered at the Second Continental Congress – at best, at best, it was, if not unexpected. Think only about indigenous peoples, many of whom are understandable supported the British Not to mention the enslaved people (and the peoples). Puritan sectarians in the new EnglaneD had little to do with Baptist sectors in Virginiaand both were antagonistic to Catholics in Merilend. (Although initially settled by Catholics, Maryland has banned them from holding a position in their constitution in 1776).)

Everyone knows the approval of the Declaration “Inherent Rights”. But as important is the verdict that emphasizes that the “people” – whose “consent” is the basis of any “fair powers” in the government – to keep the right “every time any form of government becomes devastating for these purposes … change it or cancel it.” They remain free to “create a new government … As for them, it would seem that they will affect their safety and happiness.” This expresses the true radicalism of what most people call the American Revolution.

There has never been a single American people. This is the true meaning of American federalism that makes sense only if a person recognizes a deep diversity in the American population. This pluralistic reality creates the basis for equally deep political conflicts, not all of them are capable of peaceful settlement within the existing framework. Consider, most obviously, the American civil war. I do not support the confederate separatists of 1861, but not because they wanted to leave the union. Rather, my opposition is based on why They wanted to share: commitment to the vicious and unjustified system of domination of white and slavery. Appomattox can resolve the issue of slavery; This is not the same as the resolution of the legal issue of the department.

Practically no one opposes each separative movement, whether in the distant past – and as a result of the American branch from the British Empire – or in later times, such as the department of the Soviet Socialist Republic (As permitted by Article 72 of his Constitution of 1977), Great Britain from the European Union or Slovenia from Yugoslavia. According to Justice Oliver Wandel Holmes, General principles do not resolve specific cases. The context and complexity are important. Thus, as a lawyer and an extremely concerned citizen of the United States in 2025, I fluctuating little, believing that the peaceful gap of the existing union will be preferable to the divided statehood, which does not exist neither fraternity nor passage, but only hostility with those who are perceived, often exactly as enemies.

But as a political scientist, I can’t imagine a friendly separation. The main reason is that the polarization that distinguishes the United States today is not regional, as it was in 1860. Take my own Texas state that I describe as an extremely blue state – mostly consisting of Five of the 20 largest cities in the country– built into the equally committed red state outside these cities. Similar stories Sudden divisions between urban and extrouts or rural areas We can say about almost all states. If Texas tries to leave the union at the will of the ultra -conservatives who are currently dominated by the state’s policy, the separatist movement of millions of Texas, who live in Houston and Austin, may be an immediate response. Similarly, when the liberals are wound the compartment in “Pacifica“A nation of the Western coast is presented, you can expect a similar counter-reaction from the Eastern Maregons that already exist Trying to move your counties For a more conditional political atmosphere, they identify themselves with Idah.

If we applaud Abraham Lincoln’s decision to go to war – and make what has become Almost 700,000 deaths From 1861 to 1865, it should be because this war was necessary to stop slavery. If the Lincoln just retained an alliance with the slavery intact – what, to aversion to Frederick DouglasHe pledged to do in his first introductory address – it would not be worth it. How important is the union preservation today? Any response is much more in our political commitments than in the abstract arguments of lawyers.

Sforecast LEvinson

No!

The Blue State Branch is a cheerful experiment-entertaining form of escapism from US policy stagnation, but in practice, such a division would be expensive, depleting and ideologically unchanged. Most of all, if the US has a chance in front of the climatic cataclysm and the rise of xenophobic nationalism, the country’s working class should remain the only throughout the state line. Western hemisphere requires less boundaries, not more.

By itself, the blue state does not promote a political vision, perhaps the abandonment of President Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Of course, this is a noble reason, but this is not a positive articulation of principles, and thus it would not be enough to hold a new nation together – and this believes that the geographically disabled state can successfully get rid of the military siege of Trump’s federal government in the first place.

And who would or even could lead such a movement? In the end, many blue leaders want the same things that the leaders of red want, only in different measures. California Governor Gavin News presses on the cities of California to Forbidden camps with homeless and said it “deeply unfair“For the athletes -Transgender competed in women’s sports. New York Governor Katie Wants has rejected popular requirements for Increase taxes on the richest residents of her state and failed to implement Laws on climate mitigation and Criminal justice reforms.

Other blue state leaders, such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Senator Connecticut Chris Murphy, outlined the beginnings of a political vision that differs from red America in America, but it also explains the experience of life in the Red State. They seem to understand that there is something strange and grotesque in the Red States that allowed to exalt such a despotic leader as Trump. They can accurately determine the deindustrialization, the opioid epidemic and financial savings, and usually they are in favor of returning to a new transaction-progressism of social admission for recovery. But such politicians usually lack such questions as Palestinian and immigrant rights. And this is because the leaders of the blue state could not detain the most important crises in front of us.

Two decisive issues of the present are the Palestinian release and climate. No one can be resolved through the department: environmental crises recognize any state borders, and the Palestinian case is related to American imperialism. The biosphere, the neoliberal system and the post -war global base for human rights are destroyed, introducing in the era of mass extermination and migration.

The global nature of this upheaval is reflected in how the Trump administration attacks the US Constitution: the White House has taken attacks on Freedom of speech as it is related to Israel further A proper process as it is related to immigration status. It is no coincidence that the administration also uses them as precedents for Difficult citizenship of birthright secured in 14th correction And passed during the reconstruction.

Considering the scale of injustice within the Trump administration, it is now necessary – this is the cancellation for the 21st century – not the department. Today’s cancellation movement will include three reasons: 1) Renaissance and expanding the reconstruction of ideals for the struggle for immigrant personality. 2) Complete repair and environmental rights for indigenous populations such as indigenous Americans and Palestinians. 3) confrontation against fossil fuel.

The blue ward offers none of this. In most cases, it offers retaliation against the Red States on the country’s main crisis: falling from the empire in decline. It is worth noting that the political savings of the red powers are largely the result of the practice of imperialism in the US 20th century-anti-communism, financing the imperial economy and the subsequent raid of worldwide work and resources of the south-years home.

These red states even resemble the world south in some interesting ways. As the main source of the United States Raw resources and cheap internal workThe Red States saw their relations with the earth and the work sharply disfigured. Their working class includes not only migrants without documents, but also US citizens, nominated from the formal economy through de -industrialization and dependence. These workers should not be punished for the sins of the bourgeois and small unstressed classes who decided to drag these states back to racist, mysoogin ideologies that secured the power of the slave 150 years ago.

The best way to strive for a better future is not to break down the country’s work class in two and cancel your members against each other; It continues to work to merge them. Only then will we be able to fight the problems that have been ahead of us.

Tat GA -e