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American Divorce: How the States Can Quit Each Other (Featuring Dr. Jason Sorens)

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What if the United States could peacefully resolve its deep political rifts through secession? Dr. Jason Sorens, a leading expert on secessionism and author of the book Secessionism, joins the pod to discuss the legal, historical, and cultural dimensions of secession in America. The contentious idea has gained renewed interest following Donald Trump's re-election in 2024, and we examine the complexity of secessionist movements from California to Texas to Cascadia and more. Recognizing the confines of the Supreme Court's defining 1869 Texas v. White ruling about the legality of secession, we question whether a breakup might actually bridge the political chasm dividing progressives and conservatives across the nation.

We also discuss the dynamics shaping current secession discourse, from the redrawing of state boundaries to the culture clashes within states that complicate these efforts. Drawing comparisons with international movements, such as Greenland's path to greater independence and the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia, Dr. Sorens provides a nuanced perspective on the potential paths states might consider. We examine the challenges of forming new nations and the delicate balance between self-determination and the cohesion required to sustain a united country.

Finally, we dig into the relationship between partisanship and polarization in America, contemplating whether secessionist rhetoric is merely a symptom of deeper societal divides. With examples like Vermont's quest for greater policy autonomy, we consider innovative solutions that focus on self-governance as an alternative to outright separation. Ultimately, our conversation seeks to answer this question: can unity be achieved through separation?

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Dr. Sorens:

if you had a state as big as California or Texas, try to gain independence. Trying to appease them would cost a lot. So there's also that question what sort of policies could you give them, what sort of money could you give them that would make them not want to gain independence? And I just don't think that in the US there would be a lot of appetite among the you know, men and women who make up the military to fire on Texans or Californians if they really wanted to pursue independence. I think that is something that has changed since the 1860s. So I think this would be fought out politically. And then it becomes a question of well, what kind of deal could you broker to keep the country together?

Shawn:

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig. Since Donald Trump's re-election in 2024, there has been renewed talk of secession from some blue states, echoing historical patterns of political discontent in America. In fact, just recently, california approved an initiative allowing for a collection of signatures in support of secession. That would then trigger a state-led committee to investigate the possibility. This isn't a new phenomenon. From the Hartford Convention in 1814 to the Civil War and even recent movements like the State of Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Cascadia on the West Coast, secession has been a recurring theme in US history. Legally, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v White in 1869 that unilateral secession is unconstitutional, stating that the union is indissoluble and can only be dissolved through revolution or consent of the states. Despite this, secessionist sentiments persist, driven by increasing political polarization. And who knows, I mean the court's been overturning a lot of its own established precedents lately.

Shawn:

In today's episode, we're joined by Dr Jason Sorens, a senior research fellow at American Institute for Economic Research, author of the book Secessionism and founder of the Free State Project. We discuss the evolution of secession movements, their legal standing and the complex question of whether peaceful separation might be a solution to our deeply divided electorate. We also talk about historical precedents, current trends and the potential consequences of such a drastic step. All right, if you like this episode or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive, dr Sorens. Thanks for being here. How are you?

Dr. Sorens:

I'm doing well. How are you?

Shawn:

I'm doing well as well. Thanks for taking the time to have this conversation. I think it's strikingly relevant in this moment. Although it tends to be kind of ebbs and flows, I think it's common to hear after every election some type of grumbling about secession. Red states don't want to live under blue administrations and vice versa. So of course, after the election of Trump, we're hearing much of that rhetoric coming out of blue states, particularly California these days.

Shawn:

And I've always been fascinated with the idea of secession, because I do ascribe to the concept of self-determination and there are some circumstances which it truly could be freeing for some people or groups to free themselves from oppression or repression, but at the same time, nations can't be subject to dismantling over political winds of the moment. But I will say that it really does feel like we and by we I mean those of us in the United States are at least two different people these days, are at least two different people these days you know, if we oversimplify it to progressives and conservatives and that it's possible that we may be close to or have already passed a Rubicon, you know that we can't live with each other. It does seem like in at least in our political rhetoric. We kind of despise each other, we loathe each other's policies, each other's beliefs, each other's culture, etc. And so I think I might be in on a peaceful separation that avoids some type of drawn out conflict or outright civil war.

Shawn:

But that's easier said than done. So you study this, you write about it. So that's why you're here to make me understand and maybe talk me off of, off of this ledge that I'm on. But let's just start right here, because I think this might be the end of the ballgame and then the rest of the conversation will just be an exercise in wish-casting on the part of some people. Is secession in the United States actually legal?

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, it's actually a controversial question. The constitutional law that we live under right now says that unilateral secession is not legal, so that was decided under the 1869 Supreme Court case, texas v White, and it basically said that if a state wants to secede, it needs the consent of the other states, and it was unclear about what that would mean, but implied that congressional consent might be sufficient. And so then that means that if a state wanted to secede, presumably you would have to pass something through the state legislature, and some states maybe even enact its own state constitutional amendment and then get the consent of Congress, maybe pass a bill through Congress, which would be more or less the way that the US has acquired territory in the past and relinquished territory. You have to remember that the United States has been seceded from the Philippines, gained independence from the US after a long insurgency and political campaign, so it's definitely something that could happen, but you can't just do it on your own according to existing case law and, as I've said, there's a debate about that, though.

Shawn:

So then let's put this squarely in the moment that we're in.

Shawn:

So, given the contours of our politics right now and I guess I just feel like the likelihood of Congress being willing to just let a chunk of the United States go specific to or related to our politics or because of our politics, feels like a non-starter to me, but in this moment, right so, if we consider our politics, the makeup of Congress and the election of Donald Trump, and then this increased chatter right now that's kind of coming from the West Coast.

Shawn:

It's primarily California which just passed an initiative that allows for the collection of signatures which, if they gain enough, would then lead to like a state-run committee or commission that would investigate the possibility of leaving the union, and then, of course, washington state and Oregon are always kind of clamoring to be part of that breakup. So, if we consider that kind of equation and you know the history of what we understand, as you just kind of outlined, as it relates to the legal mechanisms by which any region could leave the union, when you look at this, what do you make of it and how much weight do you give it?

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, I mean, I've frequently heard conservatives say that they would prefer that California seceded. So you could imagine potentially, if things get really bad, that a Republican majority in Congress might allow that to happen if California sought it. But you know, there really isn't any precedent internationally or historically for a country that is formed on purely ideological differences. Typically, there has to be some cultural background, some sense of nationhood, and you really don't have much of that in the United States. I could imagine maybe Hawaii having some of that, maybe even Alaska, but even a state like Texas, where there's a lot of Texas pride, people don't really think of themselves as a separate nation, and so there's a big barrier to overcome there. And so there's a big barrier to overcome there.

Dr. Sorens:

Yes, the evidence does suggest that ideological differences can help promote a secessionist movement where one exists, and so we see that in cases like Scotland, where the independence movement there points to policies coming out of Westminster that they don't like and they use that to gain support for independence. Nevertheless, there's no precedent really for ideological differences alone driving this, and so you'd really have to have some kind of nation building at the state level and probably also some collapse of functioning at the federal level in DC. And again, these things aren't impossible to imagine, but they're also not things that are likely to happen over, say, the next five years.

Shawn:

When we think about the most famous example of secession in the United States, obviously we're talking about the Civil War right, and at that time I think it was easier to conceptualize how the United States would break up, because we had a clear north-south kind of divide in the country, and so Southerners really did identify as Southerners, probably more so than Northerners identified as Northerners, but there was a regional divide, and I don't know that I see that happening in the United States in the same way.

Shawn:

I think we still have a north-south, I think we have a far west and we have a northeast, but I don't think that those are easily delineated regions of ideology and culture that maybe existed during the Civil War Right. And so when I think about places like California, when we think about secession, we always think about these as state initiatives. So a state leaving or a group of states in a region leaving. But California has a very conservative east side Right, and Oregon has a very conservative east side right, and Oregon has a very conservative east side, so does Washington, and every state has their blue zone. So it doesn't seem to me that secession along regional lines makes a lot of sense in the same way that it maybe did in the 1850s and 1860s, so I'm not even sure what an example would be to point to of how secession in an environment like that would work. Do you have thoughts?

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, I mean I live in New Hampshire, which is incredibly different from the rest of New England, and there'd be a lot of people in New Hampshire would be very upset if we were forced to go along with the rest of New England in some new country. Yeah, I mean I'll just refer again to the need for nation building here to happen before a serious secession movement. Traveler in South Carolina in the 1830s, so long before the Civil War, talking to some young men in Charleston and asking them about how they felt about something as Americans, and they said, well, we're not Americans, we're South Carolinians. And I wonder how many Californians today would say, well, I'm a Californian and not an American. Probably vanishingly few. So it would be that kind of identity that you would need to see happen before you get an independence movement.

Dr. Sorens:

But yeah, it's definitely going to be more state by state. If it were to happen, it would have to be state by state. There's no real mechanism for an entire region to withdraw. I mean, eventually you did see that in the Confederacy where you had, south Carolina was the first one to secede and then other states nearby joined in. That would divide the country so starkly that these states would see no alternative but to break away, sees itself as being very culturally distinctive and having some serious political differences with DC and potentially also just a breakdown of order and functioning in DC, and they think that they could get away with this even just on their own withdrawing, and so it would have to be a set of multiple circumstances to allow this to happen, and again, it's kind of hard to imagine that happening in the near future, no matter how polarized we get.

Shawn:

So if you had to point at I mean to me I feel like we've kind of set this up already but if you had to point at a state that was at least somewhat in the realm of making that happen or meeting some of these requirements that you've outlined, which one or ones do you think would that be?

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, I mean the evidence from elections so far in the United States is that it would be. If we're talking just about states, alaska is the one that actually has elected a governor on a platform of independence before elected a governor on a platform of independence before. Now the governor said he wasn't going to pursue it during the campaign and that's partly how he got elected. But he got elected as a candidate on the secessionist party. So that's the one case, the one state where we have some evidence that there's this kind of support that actually materializes in the political system.

Dr. Sorens:

There was an attempt in Texas a couple of years ago. A state rep filed a bill to hold a referendum on independence. Didn't really go anywhere. Same thing in New Hampshire got heavily defeated. So there are a couple of other states where there's been some political activity from actually elected officials on this. So I guess those would be the three states where I see there's a little bit of a base there that you could build on. They seem to be ahead of the others in terms of actually having some elected officials who want to pursue this.

Shawn:

There's another aspect to secession, or another potential push for secession that is not about leaving the union as much as it's potentially redrawing the state boundaries themselves we mentioned earlier. You know, on the east side of all of the West Coast states there's a conservative push to for some reason Idaho always comes up as being the state that they want to join. But in that type of a scenario, I mean there's a part of me that wonders if that would be something short of outright secession that we could visit as a way to kind of reduce some of the tension that we're experiencing or the polarization right now. Although that then begs the question of does that mean that every hundred years or so so, as people migrate and our politics kind of shift in regions, we redraw state boundaries? That seems a bit ridiculous. But if that were a route that we were to pursue and states were open to doing something like that, would they be following the same secession playbook as if they were actually leaving the union, or would this be handled differently?

Dr. Sorens:

Differently. There's an established constitutional procedure for this, so the legislatures of the states involved would have to consent and then Congress would have to consent. But there would be no legal controversy about how you do it, and so that's why we've seen those movements mushroom quite a bit. Some of them want to form a 51st state. You know there was the State of Jefferson movement in far northern California and southern Oregon at one time. There was the Western New York movement at one time You've mentioned the Greater Idaho movement.

Dr. Sorens:

That seems to be the one with the greatest momentum right now. You had a case in the aughts, back in the aughts, when the town of Killington, vermont, actually voted to join New Hampshire. But the problem with all of those, the problem there is not legal, it's more political. For this to happen, to get it to happen, you'd have to get a majority of the state you're trying to secede from, and so it's unclear how you get that. If you could win a majority in the state you're trying to secede from, you wouldn't want to secede from it because you would have political power. So I definitely see that as also being very unlikely to happen.

Shawn:

Yeah, it does seem like there's this odd political relationship here wherein, in order to get the concession to leave, you might have already built the coalition that might require or, you know, might be worth staying. So it's almost like it works in the negative that the rest of the country has to say we really don't want you to be part of us anymore. And I'm not sure how you build that type of a coalition for ejection.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, I mean, if you were to look at what is maybe the most realistic path forward could be for states to try to opt out of federal policies or programs, and again they would need congressional consent to that.

Dr. Sorens:

But there's precedent for this in other federations, so in Canada, for example. Canada has reformed its federalism several times to accommodate Quebec, especially although it's had independence movements in the West as well, and it allows provinces, for example, to have their own social security policies, so their own kind of public pension retirement system. They can also even handle their own immigration policies. To a certain extent Quebec has immigration control, so there is precedent for this to happen. It would need political pressure coming from the state level and some responsiveness in Congress to think, maybe to prevent a secessionist movement, or maybe just because we're ideologically committed to shrinking the federal government, we hand powers back to the states. They can do what they want with them, and so you could end up with single-payer health care in Vermont right next to private social security in New Hampshire, or something like that. That's another potential path forward, and we've already seen something a little bit like that with state-level marijuana legalization, simply because the federal government is unable to enforce federal law in states that don't want to cooperate with it.

Shawn:

I'm glad you bring up Canada, because I did want to go here eventually, so we might as well go there now, which is this is something that you've written quite a bit about, but there's a lot to be learned from how secessionist movements in other regions and other places in the world have succeeded, I suppose, and or failed. But I do wonder one if you've given the thought to what are some of the maneuvers and strategies that have been employed that have been successful that might also be successful here for secessionist movements, regardless of whether or not we agree with them, and then also if there might be something about American history or American culture that acts as some type of a resistant to success in ways that has benefited other regions or other places benefited other regions or other places.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, we haven't seen an actual peaceful secession or secession of any kind in a high-income democracy like a Western democracy Since 1918, when Iceland seceded from Denmark sometimes people say 1944. It's actually 1918 when they gained independence, but they became a republic in 1944. And then before that you had Norway seceding from Sweden in 1905. So it has happened, but it's extremely rare and you see movements that gain majorities, like in Catalonia and Scotland and Quebec, that are unable to actually push the ball across the goal line. And there are various reasons for this, but one is that voters are very risk averse, or at least a lot of them are. Enough of them are to prevent this from happening, even in cases where it seems like it would be a win economically for the citizens of the region. Catalonia is the clearest example. Catalonia is wealthier than the rest of Spain. If they were independent it would be like a big tax cut for Catalans.

Dr. Sorens:

But because Spain was willing to arrest a bunch of people and send a bunch of troops in to prevent independence from happening, political leadership sort of quailed and backed away at the last minute and didn't really try to use a general strike or massive civil disobedience or anything like that, to try to win independence. So it was kind of a went out with more of a whimper than a bang In cases like Britain where the government has said, hey, we will honor the results of a referendum. If the people of Scotland want to secede, we'll let them. That itself, I think, maybe has made voters more comfortable voting to stay, because they realize that their concerns are heated, and maybe it's better to have independence as a threat than a reality, because then you can get more stuff, get more concessions from the central government, and so maybe that's what ends up happening here in the US too. If you did see a strong state secession movement, maybe Congress would just appease them rather than actually allow them to go.

Shawn:

This might sound like an odd question, but because it does feel like, at end of day, what the question is asking us to do is to put a price on the value of each of the states. But I could imagine that there are certain states that Congress as much as a state might be a thorn in the federal government side let's say today, california in the current administration side. There are also, on the flip side of that, a lot of resources that California provides to the United States. That would be lost, and so I wonder if that creates some more friction where, in other parts of the country I don't want to name them because I don't really know what they are it might be easier for them if they wanted to secede. It would be less of a burden on the United States to say you know, sure, go, do your thing right.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, that's right. I mean, would the US like to let Silicon Valley go? All that agriculture that you have in California, the entertainment industry, right. It would be kind of strange if these things were no longer part of America. Plus the fact that it's very geographically large, it borders Mexico, it's oriented toward Asia, there are some sort of geopolitical reasons why you might want to retain control over it and, in general, states care a lot about the geopolitical situation of territory. I mean, that's why President Trump has talked about acquiring Greenland, because it's just favorably situated geographically and could be a sort of security and economic benefit to the US. And so, for those reasons, states are reluctant to let territories go. Sometimes, as in Spain, they're willing to fight. Sometimes, as in Great Britain or Canada, they're willing to concede and appease in order to prevent secession from happening.

Dr. Sorens:

I think the safe bet is that the US would try to act the same way. Now the question is whether they're going to be able to. If you had a state as big as California or Texas, try to gain independence. Trying to appease them would cost a lot. So there's also that question what sort of policies could you give them? What sort of money could you give them. That would make them not want to gain independence, make them not want to gain independence, and I just don't think that in the US there would be a lot of appetite among the men and women who make up the military to fire on Texans or Californians if they really wanted to pursue independence. I think that is something that has changed since the 1860s. So I think this would be fought out politically and then it becomes a question of well, what kind of deal could you broker to keep the country together?

Shawn:

So you brought up Greenland. Trump's interest in acquiring Greenland suggests that Greenland, which is part of Denmark, that some finagling would have to happen there, right, and I think we immediately jump to. Are we talking about, like, taking Greenland, which is part of Denmark? That some finagling would have to happen there? Right, and I think we immediately jump to. Are we talking about, like, taking Greenland by force? And then are we talking about going to war with our NATO partners or Europe? But I do wonder, have you what is the process for Greenland, were it to decide to leave Denmark and then join the United States, and is that considered secession? And this is all regardless of the poll that apparently shows about 95% of Greenlanders don't want to become part of the United States.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah. So Greenlanders right now don't want to become part of the United States, but there is a majority there for independence right now. The problem is that Greenland gets a lot of subsidies from Denmark, but the government they've elected is committed to pursuing independence gradually and they have assumed many competencies from Denmark, and Denmark's been willing to pursue that path of appeasing them as well as to allow independence if they ultimately decide on it independence if they ultimately decide on it. If Greenland were to become independent, it's in a very vulnerable position. I think Trump maybe he's getting this from his advisors, but I think he's onto something when he says that the US could protect Greenland from Russia and China taking advantage of them, because I think that's exactly the sort of thing that could happen if Greenland became independent. I mean, it's a country of about 80,000 people, its GDP per capita is pretty low, but it has a lot of subsurface mineral potential potential, so there's there's a great deal of potential benefit there from bringing in international investment, which would need to be protected right. So Greenland is probably not going to be able to do that all on its own, and so there's a there's a question here if they, if they play out the game tree.

Dr. Sorens:

It could be that Greenlanders decide wait a second, maybe we are better off just staying within Denmark, perhaps in some sort of arrangement typically known as free association, where Denmark has foreign policy and security responsibility for Greenland but everything else is a devolved competency and Greenland is sovereign over its own internal affairs. The US has arrangements like that with the Marshall Islands, for example, and I believe the Northern Mariana Islands as well. Technically it's a form of independence, but you have conceded your external sovereignty really that core element of independent statehood to a larger and more powerful state no-transcript with the United States. So I think, given those alternatives, what Greenland voters are likely to favor is some sort of remaining tie to Denmark. But we'll have to see.

Shawn:

When I mentioned to people you know, this concept of secession, some states or regions from the United States, and this doesn't really matter. When I talk to folks that are perhaps more conservative versus people that are liberal, they all come down on the same thing If they are open to the idea of secession the same potential problems, which are how do we or how does a state or a region reformulate itself into a country? It's difficult for people to kind of wrap their brain around all the considerations country. It's difficult for people to kind of wrap their brain around all the considerations. So they see the idea of the legal framework leaving with the United States. They see defense leaving with the United States. They see the economy leaving with the United States, and so I'm wondering how would a state go about rebuilding, or what is some of the considerations that need to be taken into account prior to an actual secession in order to hit the ground running for that to happen?

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, one of the closest analogs in recent history is probably the Velvet Divorce in Czechoslovakia, where Czechia and Slovakia split ways peacefully, and they did it by dividing up state assets. In that case you might say it was a little bit easier because the country is already going through a massive economic transition. Things were already in flux. You had two entities that had to negotiate. There wasn't a long drawn-out political process, so I could envision it being a little bit more challenging in the US. You'd have to as a state, you'd have to gain a lot of competencies that currently the federal government controls. So think about the regulatory state, for example food and drug inspection, securities regulation. States already do some of that, but there's a lot that would have to be taken over from the federal government, and what you could do is you could say you know if this were negotiated, hey, we're going to share data with the federal government and the federal government will share data with us and we'll make sure that you know everybody's social security records get transferred over and so their benefits stay with them, and we can try to make that process as smooth as we can. But it's going to be something that takes a year or two at least to sort out. These are big bureaucracies. There's a lot of data involved here. There are a lot of legal frameworks that have to be arranged. I mean, what do you do about monetary policy?

Dr. Sorens:

In some ways, it's easier for a small country because you can defer to some of the international leaders on some of these things. So, for instance, with food and drug regulation, you could say something like we know we will adopt whatever the regulatory recommendations are from. A kind of gold standard regulator Could be the EU, could be the US. Actually, a lot of people have been pushing for the US to adopt such a policy, for Congress to enact a law saying that if the EU approves a drug, you know they're a gold standard regulator. We'll just deem it approved in the US, and so as a state, you can do things like that.

Dr. Sorens:

Generally, small countries don't want a big diplomatic corps, but you want some diplomatic corps. You want some military. Presumably you could try to take control of your state National Guard and use that as the foundation for future military force. You could, instead of setting up your own central bank, simply defer to the dollar right in the way that many small countries in Europe simply use the euro. So there are ways you could try to do this on the cheap, but once you start to think through everything that would have to be transferred from the federal to the state level to prevent it from becoming chaotic, it would have to be a negotiated process that would involve a lot of goodwill on both sides and take place over a couple of years.

Shawn:

So there is another player here, and that's the international community, and I don't really have a handle on this, but I know that there is international law and that there are bodies international bodies such as the United Nations that do play a role in establishing the contours of conflict, and they do leverage some both soft and hard power there in different ways. And so I'm wondering how the international community and which, I suppose, players in the international community might have something to say about secession in the United States, or where and when they would have something to say.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, so foreign powers are going to defer to the US government and that is a well-established norm and I think it's unlike a lot of international norms that are honored more in the breach than the observance. There are good sort of power politics reasons why states have an incentive to defer to that norm. Even when you consider a state as weak and imploded as Somalia, you've seen that foreign governments are very reluctant to recognize Somaliland, which has been a functioning state, relatively liberal, even democratic actually, and open to trade and things like that, and it's been functioning for over 30 years now without international recognition. I believe maybe Ethiopia has recognized it and so even in that case a great power like the United States has deferred to the government of Somalia and said that we're not going to recognize Somaliland against the will of Somalia, going to recognize Somaliland against the will of Somalia.

Dr. Sorens:

The major counterexample here is Kosovo, where you saw the US had a very strong interest in breaking up a sort of client state of Russia and so really kind of put its thumb on the scale in favor of Kosovo independence. And even though Serbia did not consent to Kosovo's secession, the US did recognize Kosovo, but not every government did and a number of other high-income states. You know, medium to major powers did not, like Spain, for example, thinking about their own domestic politics, never recognized Kosovo. For example, thinking about their own domestic politics, never recognized Kosovo. So in the case of the US, I think it's very, very likely that other governments would not recognize any unilateral secession that is not approved by Congress. But if the US government takes the lead and says, yeah, this is okay, we allow this, here's the process. Takes the lead and says, yeah, this is okay, we allow this, here's the process and we're recognizing this new state, then there's really no controversy and you might expect foreign governments to also recognize the new state and begin diplomatic relations with it.

Shawn:

It seems entirely impossible or implausible that secession for any state or any region from the United States is going to happen anytime in the near future, and I guess I don't have the historical context to really have a sense of whether or not all of this excitement that you know exists right now in our contemporary times and in our politics, and it is under both Republican and Democratic presidents. If that excitement for secession is any greater than it was, say, 50 years ago, or 100 years ago or 150 years ago, I don't really know, but it feels like there's a lot more chatter, but that secession itself is just really unlikely. What I do think, though, is that there is a possibility or potential that states some states are going to be pursuing more autonomy that is short of secession, and I don't know if that's possible, but if so, I wonder what that could look like or might look like.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, I mean the polls that have been done on this do seem to show an increase in support for states gaining independence. When it's tested, you know, do you want your state to gain independence or be an independent state or secede from the union? The numbers in those polls do seem to show a kind of secular increase, although, as you would expect, when it's a Republican president in power, it's Democrats who are more in favor of secession, and when it's a Democratic president in power, it's Republicans who are more in favor of secession, and the numbers are non-trivial by international standards. So anywhere from 20 to 35 percent of each state's population in any given year wants to secede, which is a lot actually. I mean the Scottish National Party, when it first had its breakthrough in the 1970s, only about 20 to 25 percent of Scots wanted Scotland to become independent and of course it, you know, ended up gaining majority power in Scotland and holding a referendum on the issue. So it's certainly conceivable that you could end up with a larger percentage of voters supporting this in certain states. And so I guess what I want to say is, even though it's very, very unlikely that a state will gain independence or even try to gain independence in the next, you know, 5 to 10, 15, 20 years. There's a good possibility that this politics of independence nevertheless shapes our political system and that all this chatter about secession and separatism and the country breaking apart tends to have its own momentum and tends to shape how people think about things. And again, I think states could push for autonomy in various ways.

Dr. Sorens:

Push for autonomy in various ways. You know, when Vermont actually enacted its bill to have single-payer health care, they were going to pursue a waiver from the Department of Health and Human Services, a waiver from, essentially, obamacare rules and other federal health insurance rules, so they could have this. Erisa is another piece of the puzzle here, and so you know Congress has actually delegated a lot of authority to the executive branch when it comes to some of these complex regulatory and social welfare programs. So you could imagine that an executive branch would issue pretty wide-ranging waivers on federal policies to states that want to do their own thing. And you could imagine Congress even carving out exemptions for certain states by name if their delegations push for it and demand it as the price to pay for their vote.

Dr. Sorens:

On some other issue negotiated in the Senate, there was for some time an amendment in there. That would have exempted Nebraska from paying for Medicaid and that was an autonomy for Nebraska. It was just a direct payment to Nebraska specifically to get their senators to vote for the bill. Questionable whether that would have been legal, but there doesn't seem to be any legal barrier to just saying, hey, if you want to have your own pension program instead of Social Security, you can do that and we'll, you know, transfer data and make that happen, just as has happened in Canada.

Shawn:

So you could start to see states push for that, if you know, if this polarization continues, where people just find federal policies intolerable and want the state to opt out, so you'd mentioned the political language of secession becoming part of our discourse and that that could in turn lead to, you know, a growing sense of acceptance of potential secession for any given state or region.

Shawn:

But one of the things that I worry about is we're already in a heightened polarized state right now that feels like we're living in almost like a cold civil war to some degree. That not to be histrionic but feels like there could be pockets of violence that just kind of arise from that, and there's a fear I have that to lean into secessionism as a potential solution could actually inflame that conflict. There is another flashpoint that's being introduced here, and so, while that might be in pursuit of let's call this like a peaceful divorce or whatever, that it actually could lead to conflict that otherwise might be avoided. And so I'm wondering if there are things that secession movements can or should be doing, because I do believe that people do have the right to at least explore self-determination right for themselves, but that they can or should be doing responsibly to ensure that it doesn't explode.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, when political scientists study polarization, particularly affective polarization, which is, you know, disliking the other side, they find that that's driven by a small minority of voters who are disproportionately loud on social media, for example, and that that in turn derives kind of disaffection from people on the other side who think that those people are representative of the other side, right? So, you see, if you're a liberal and you see conservatives behaving badly online, you think, well, that's what conservatives are like, I guess, and vice versa for conservatives seeing liberals doing that. So, yes, we are seeing this polarization in a sense feed on itself to some extent, and it's difficult to see how you turn that around, and it's possible that some of this language on secession could feed that. On the other hand, for a movement to gain popular support, they can't just rely on this slogan of independence and let's separate. Rely on this slogan of independence and let's separate. That's what we see internationally is that these parties, these movements, only gain political power once they have an attractive political program that they can take to voters on their doorstep and say this is how we're going to make your lives better.

Dr. Sorens:

And so there is a possibility that by focusing and my premise would be that they focus on self-government or autonomy or formulations like that, rather than secession and independence, just because I don't think it's very feasible that these states are going to want their own military forces and things like that.

Dr. Sorens:

You know, if they focus on autonomy and self-government and gaining control over certain policies and having them devolve from the federal level, they're going to have to think through the policy consequences. They're going to have to think through implementation. And that's when you start to take a step back from this pure politics of emotion and start to think through what would this actually look like? How would this make citizens' lives better? And there is a hope that maybe what it does is give us more creative solutions. You know there's a lot of disaffection and talk about entitlement reform and maybe we can't get that done at the federal level, but maybe let states do it in their own way. And that is something that you know hopefully will get us thinking a little bit more about well, how can we together make our lives better?

Shawn:

A lot of secession movements are rooted in some type of an ethnic conflict, and I've been talking a lot about polarization and partisanship in the United States and to some some degree, conflating that right or assuming that partisanship is the driver of the secession movements. But assuming that that is true, is it fair to characterize what's happening in the United States, or could we reasonably conflate the two and say that partisanship in the United States has essentially risen to the point that it is akin to something like ethnic regionalism or factionalism?

Dr. Sorens:

There are some similarities. It does seem that for many people, their party identity, or perhaps their ideological identity, has become a kind of tribal affiliation that comes first, and they derive pleasure from owning the other side right and seeing the other side defeated. And you know, george Orwell was writing about that in 1984, many decades ago, about how totalitarian regimes leverage that kind of feeling. You know the savor of victory, you know, and seeing your enemies put to flight. There's something atavistic about that that appeals to people.

Dr. Sorens:

The big difference, of course, with a typical ethno-regional secessionist movement is that you have Republicans and Democrats everywhere. There are lots of Republicans, millions of Republicans, in New York City and there are, you know, millions of Democrats in in red America as well. So you know places like Texas, for example. So you know you're living side by side with the, with the people that you think of as the, as the adversary, and so it really makes things like secession less feasible, because you again don't have that kind of regional base that you can say, well, this is our homeland. You know what is the Republican homeland in America?

Dr. Sorens:

Well, there really isn't one. Or the Democratic homeland yeah, there are states that are deeper red or deeper blue. But even in those states you have pockets that go the other way. So I think it's a fruitful mode of analysis to say, okay, this is what activates people in ethnic conflicts around the world. What does that imply about partisanship and polarization here in America and you can get fruitful insights from that, for instance, the politics of symbolism mattering a great deal. But it also, if you think that's the mode of analysis that explains the US it also implies that secessionism is unlikely to bea big part of that kind of transpartisan conflict.

Shawn:

So you actually kind of brought us full circle. You started the conversation early on by saying that you know the likelihood of any serious secession movement in the United States occurring in the next five to 10 years is very small. So, considering that and then the context of our conversation, the realities of the polarization that I keep coming back to, and then, I suppose, through the lens of the work that you do and your expertise to, and then, I suppose, through the lens of the work that you do, and your expertise.

Dr. Sorens:

Are there any alarm bells going off for you? Yeah, I mean the alarm bells are going off because of the way I think partisan polarization, ideological polarization, have influenced people's ability to kind of think rationally through policy matters and their ability to reason about evidence, and so you get a lot of discounting of any kind of objective or expert findings or knowledge because the fact that you know you see them as the ideological or partisan other In some cases, obviously the experts have the so-called experts have undermined their own expertise and you can point to how politics has invaded lots of kind of highbrow spaces, like the journal Nature, for example, making presidential endorsements and writing editorials that are sharply partisan and ideological, and that undermines their expertise. And so in a lot of ways the so-called experts deserve the skepticism that they're now getting. But I do see a kind of nihilism emerging out of that, this polarization on both sides, where we operate with our own versions of truth and maybe it doesn't even matter what the truth is. The truth is whatever owns the other side in a given moment.

Dr. Sorens:

It's hard not to think that this undermines good policy in the long run, that it's going to be harder and harder to find people who are actually dispassionate. It's going to be harder and harder to find people who are actually dispassionate, who actually think through how things work and want to figure them out and make policies work. So that's the thing that I think is the big problem right now. I think the talk of secession is not so much adding to that problem as it is reflecting that problem of reflecting that problem. And if we can somehow solve this problem of polarization and mistrust, then I think the issue of secession either goes away or, to the extent that it survives, becomes something that's a bit more rational and maybe rooted in things like actual substantive policy issues and the kind of collective interest of the people living in different states.

Shawn:

All right, final question you ready for it?

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah.

Shawn:

What's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately and it can be related to this topic, but it doesn't have to be.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, let's see. I think one interesting thing I've read recently, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with a novel, actually because, uh, I I do like to read fiction, um, and I especially like to read things that are out of copyright because it's very cheap, you know, put it on my kindle. As I read a lot of classic literature and something that very pleasantly surprised me was the Good Soldier by Ford Maddox. Ford, which an author I'd never really read before, didn't seem to be, from my perspective, part of the canon or whatever. It was highly innovative, with a kind of flawed narrator, but that, precisely because it uses a flawed narrator, there's actually a lot of insight into interpersonal relationships, and I'm I don't want to give too many spoilers, but I would just say that it was a fun read that, I think, also spoke to something about human experience.

Shawn:

Ford, Maddox Ford. I've not even heard of the author, but I think that's a cool name.

Dr. Sorens:

Yeah, I think it's a sort of a pen name. But yeah, he's sort of one of these British authors coming out of this Edwardian period like, oh, you know, the guy who did Room with a View and Howard's End. I'm blanking on his name right now but you know, this early 20th century's turn toward modernism it's much easier to read, I think, than James Joyce. But there's also this kind of really fun playing with language and perspective. Maybe Virginia Woolf would be the closest analog to the four.

Shawn:

Are you drawn to books from a certain period, or is this just something you haven't done? I mean, you did mention that you like to read stuff that's on copyright, so that kind of gives it away.

Dr. Sorens:

Well, that's true, but I also do like the literature of that period. I mean, I do think that I read some contemporary novels, but I also do like the literature of that period. I mean, I do think that I read some contemporary novels. I think there was a time in kind of new society forming through globalization and capitalism and industrialization, and we've come through that now and there are a lot of people, there's a middle class or people have wealth, people have free time, and it definitely speaks a little bit more to today than the earlier Victorian literature or, like you know, jane Austen or whatever I think, which I, you know, I also like. But I think it speaks a little bit more to today. The character is a little more identifiable. Yet also there's this there's still this sense of kind of a little bit of literary realism. There's still this sense of kind of a little bit of literary realism. You know, we're not totally self-referential. We haven't passed that post-modernist moment where we still really are trying to explore something about the world.

Shawn:

I get a lot of book recommendations from people and sometimes I race through them and sometimes I have to write to people and say like I could not get through this book. So I'll check it out, I'll let you know.

Dr. Sorens:

Sure, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Shawn:

Dr Sorens, thanks for taking the time, and maybe in 10, 15 years we can meet in one of our new countries and have a drink.

Dr. Sorens:

That would be fun. Thanks for having me on.

Shawn:

It's clear that this issue secession remains as contentious and complex as ever, and especially at this moment when we in the United States are maybe as polarized as we were in the lead-up to the Civil War. The deep political divisions we discussed in this episode have led some Americans to seriously consider the once unthinkable prospect of dissolving the Union. While the legal precedent set by Texas v White declares unilateral secession unconstitutional, the debate persists to this day, maybe even more so now than at any time since the Civil War, fueled by growing cultural and ideological rifts. And precedents can be challenged. They can be overturned. Ultimately, the question of whether to preserve the union or pursue a national divorce reflects the ongoing struggle to balance unity with self-determination in our complex but weakened political landscape. So, looking to the future, we really have two options Find ways to bridge our divides within the existing framework, or accept that the differences have truly become irreconcilable and find a way to break up. I think I might be ready for the latter.

Shawn:

It's becoming ever more clear that blue states cannot live under Republican policies and red states won't live under Democratic policies. We do not just disagree on some policies. We are culturally, socially, fundamentally different people, and if every election is truly an existential battle between two diametrically opposed peoples and futures. That is a recipe for nothing good. It feels like we're barreling toward, at minimum a cold civil war, but quite possibly a hot civil war. Why go through that disaster? Why forfeit lives? Why scorch the earth? Because we don't like each other? I don't want to be forced to live in your world and you don't want to be forced to live in mine. So let's just break up. No drama, all right. Check back next week for another episode of Deep Dive Chat. Soon, folks. Thank you, thank you.

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Shawn C. Fettig

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