Is This The Best Way to Sell Secession?

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s national divorce comment started a national conversation.

Sean Hannity invited her on to his program to find out what she meant by a “national divorce.”

She wavered and waffled and eventually concluded that she didn’t really mean secession.

She meant separation or the ability for red state conservatives to be free from the tyranny of blue state leftists.

This represents the modern equivocation of “conservative, inc.,” even among those who think they are edgy, like Michael Anton.

Anton recently penned a wordy, boring, and poorly written short story about the difference between “secession” and “separation” for a little known online magazine. (This is after he has said conservatives need to embrace literature. It’s almost…almost…as if he has been listening to the Abbeville Institute on this issue for the last 20 years).

The story centers on a conversation between two Californians about the meaning of secession. One, a “conservative,” moved to Texas to get away from high taxes and discovered “separation.” The other, a progressive, lives in California and enjoys his socialist paradise.

The story reads like Edward House’s Philip Dru: Administrator. If you’ve never read that book, don’t subject yourself to the agony. Some have argued that it presented the blueprint for Woodrow Wilson’s time in office. There is some truth to this, but only if you can slog through it’s banal dialogue and boring plot.

Kind of like Anton’s attempt at fiction.

Anton differentiates the terms “separation” and “secession.” You see, secession is illegal and only about slavery. Separation is legal because it could be negotiated. By the way, just two years ago, Anton chided yours truly for thinking secession was a good idea. Maybe, like Lincoln, he just evolves on issues, and forgets what he said before.

I commend Anton for giving this a shot, like I would commend an eighth grader for writing a political short story. That is the depth of his knowledge of the issue.

I understand what Anton, as a good West Coast Straussian, is trying to accomplish. Like Harry Jaffa’s laughable attempt to make equality a conservative principle to avoid charges of racism, Anton is trying to make secession palatable to Lincolnians who think secession is treason.

It won’t work. They will still call you a traitor for supporting “separation” as they will still call you a racist even if you love Lincoln and criticize the South. You might feel better hiding behind your treasury of virtue, but progressives don’t care.

I actually think the leftist foil in his story makes better points than the conservative hero. At least he understands the stupidity of Anton’s “separation vs. secession” dichotomy. Anton, of course, thinks he brilliantly refutes every point.

Not to beat a dead horse, but if you accept Lincoln as your conservative hero you aren’t going to conserve anything.

The Revolution of 1861 will continue, along with the Constitution of 1868.

Secession is the proper word, or better yet independence and self-determination, all American principles.

We can debate if secession is viable or possible in 2023, but we should never capitulate by calling it something else to please the American establishment dopes.

Of course, Anton always makes for great Podcast fodder, so I took on his story–mercifully for you–on Episode 798 of The Brion McClanahan Show.