Federalist No. 5 - “an entire and perfect union”
by John Jay
The same Subject continued
In our last installment we discussed Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call for a “national divorce.”
And frankly, I hoped that would be the end of it. The Atlantic even ran a piece called “Never Mind Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘National Divorce’,” telling us not to worry and observing “that the United States has always been in a troubled marriage.” But forgive me for continuing to worry, because Greene’s tweet doesn’t exist in a vacuum. She has since suggested policies to implement such a divorce (“once [Democrats] move to a red state, guess what, maybe you don't get to vote for five years”). And calls for secession have been on the rise in recent years, both from those on the right (last year the Idaho House passed a bill “that would allow a conservative portion of eastern Oregon to join Idaho”) and on the left (following President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and in response to the Tea Party movement).
Such calls remind me of the Bible’s book of Exodus. The Israelites plundered the Egyptians and escaped slavery when God parted the Red Sea (chapter 14). Then, the people sang a song of praise to God (chapter 15). Then, about two seconds later, “the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
When we forget where we came from, we say some pretty ridiculous things. The author of the book of Exodus knew it. And—you guessed it—so did the authors of the Federalist.
In Federalist No. 5, John Jay implores the citizens to consider the many and clear benefits of a union of American states under the Constitution by quoting a 1706 letter by Queen Ann to the Scottish Parliament:
An entire and perfect union will be the solid foundation of lasting peace: It will secure your religion, liberty, and property; remove the animosities amongst yourselves, and the jealousies and differences betwixt our two kingdoms. It must increase your strength, riches, and trade; and by this union the whole island, being joined in affection and free from all apprehensions of different interest, will be ENABLED TO RESIST ALL ITS ENEMIES.
John Jay’s example of the British Isle still applies to the question of “national divorce”: where England, Scotland and Wales “were for ages divided into three, and that those three were almost constantly embroiled in quarrels and wars with one another…Should the people of America divide themselves into three or four nations, would not the same thing happen?”
It would! Think about the enormous practical challenges that would come from the divided America Representative Greene suggests. The first challenge the Congresswoman might encounter is that she very likely lives in a blue state. (Oops.) Georgia voted for a Democrat for president in 2020, has voted for Democrats for Senate three times (in three opportunities) in the last two years, and elected its Republican governor largely based on his willingness to stand up to a fellow Republican.
Luckily for her, declaring states to be “red” or “blue” is a gross oversimplification. It would be more accurate—to the extent this sort of thing is helpful at all, and I’m not sure it is—to say we live not in a nation of red and blue states, but of red rural areas and relatively blue urban areas. Check out this map, which shows 2020 presidential election results by county and population:
Or this one, which illustrates that the counties themselves are not monoliths, but a mix of political preferences best represented by shades of purple:
Finding the red states and blue states in these maps is no easy task, is it?
David French has a great book called Divided We Fall where he explores “America’s Secession Threat” in detail—you should check it out—but it may also be helpful to consider just a few of the challenges that would arise from a “national divorce” here:
Would you need a passport or visa to visit your relatives in other states?
What happens to the armed forces? Who gets the nukes? Who gets the aircraft carriers?
What happens to trade agreements?
Do state borders become controlled?
What happens to our water?
What happens to social security and medicare, particularly with regard to those who rely on them right now?
Have relatives in D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, or American Samoa? Good luck figuring that out.
“But,” you say, “won’t we be able to solve these problems through treaties or other agreements like the European Union?” Maybe. Perhaps you have more confidence than I do in our state and federal representatives’ willingness and ability to negotiate such terms in our current political environment.
But a “successful” end to the union would be no less of a disaster. As John Jay observed in Federalist No. 5, it would be “more natural for these confederacies to apprehend danger from one another than from distant nations, and therefore that each of them should be more desirous to guard against the others by the aid of foreign alliances, than to guard against foreign dangers by alliances between themselves.”
Instead of shrinking away from our nation’s challenges and opening up ourselves to such dangers, I think we ought to try finding common ground. Listening more. Moderating our discourse. Exercising the incredible rights we have under the constitution to participate in the political process and fight for policies we believe in.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a lot better than national divorce—that has been a terrible idea for 236 years. And it still is.