A New Kind of Patriotism
“Let the Union slide.”
Those words come from an 1855 speech by Massachusetts Congressman Nathaniel P. Banks. Banks was addressing an anti-slavery rally on the campaign trail in Portland, Maine. Decrying the Slavocracy in the south, he stated:
I am not one of that class of men who cry for the perpetuation of the Union. I am willing in a certain set of circumstances to ‘let it slide’ … If the chief object of the people of this country be to maintain, perpetuate and propagate chattel property in man — this Union cannot stand, and it ought not to stand.
Banks would go on to serve as the first Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Massachusetts Governor, and Union general in the Civil War. We can speculate on what he might think of a post-slavery 21st century America where glaring racial disparities persist and wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a small white elite. Whatever the case, those of us living through incipient fascism and oligarchy in the United States during the Trump/post-Trump era are facing real, existential challenges to our democracy.
Today’s Republican Party explicitly embraces authoritarianism, white supremacy, treason, and nihilism. The GOP helped stage a bloody coup attempt on January 6 to install Donald Trump as president against the will of America’s voters. It feeds Covid disinformation to its base that is killing them by the thousands. The Grand Old Party is increasingly incapable of prevailing over Democratic candidates in free and fair elections so it wants to do away with them entirely. Republican officials who stood for the integrity of the 2020 presidential election have been purged from the party’s ranks. In the November 2022 midterm elections, expect GOP officials and legislatures to attempt to nullify the victories of Democratic candidates in red states across the country.
In the face of this threat to individual freedom and self-governance, the leadership of the Democratic Party seems unable to act boldly and decisively. Like Republicans, Democrats have been seduced by Big Money. And they’ve been cowed by decades of intimidation at the hands of GOP leaders and their well-armed base. The Democrats have 50 votes in the Senate and appear unwilling to whip Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to eliminate the filibuster so urgent reforms can be enacted. President Joe Biden likewise appears comfortable with limited governance via the budget reconciliation process. He refuses to use his bully pulpit to address the way the filibuster gives 41 Republican Senators representing just 22% of the U.S. population the ability to block all legislation. Remarkably, many in the Democratic rank and file continue to have faith that Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will defeat the GOP’s fascist putsch and save American democracy.
With our Democratic-controlled government paralyzed, the six right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court are filling the policy-making void and helping Republicans gut our democracy. Naturally, the Democratic Party is not calling for an expansion of the Supreme Court to counter Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s eradication of democratic norms. The party (vaguely) prefers “structural [federal] court reforms to increase transparency and accountability.”
Is robust, multicultural democracy still possible in the United States? Our political system has been corrupted for far too long without defense or repair. Today, one out of every four Americans has no problem with authoritarian government as long as white supremacy and patriarchy are ensured. Increasingly, American politics are being dominated by a very un-democratic minority rule.
At some point, it might become necessary for Blue (and Purple) state leaders to call for a popular convention to draft a new constitution and establish a new government. This process could fuel remarkable improvements over the U.S. Constitution, such as a federal right to vote; explicit Equal Rights language; a prohibition on the use of private money in political campaigns; the abolition of the Electoral College; no lifetime tenure for Supreme Court Justices; a lower standard to amend the constitution, etc., etc. Such a (new) nation would be a bulwark of democracy in a world where self-determination is in grave danger. And it could serve as a critical safe haven for red state residents fleeing authoritarianism and seeking to reclaim or expand their rights. Some will counter that a popular convention to establish a new government would violate Article V of the U.S. Constitution, which requires supermajority votes from Congress and the states as part of its Amendment Process. But America’s Founders violated similar rules on two occasions — once when establishing their independence from the British monarchy, and again when replacing the ineffective Articles of Confederation with the Constitution.
We understand the negative connotations surrounding secession. Many Americans naturally associate it with slavery, war and contemporary Russian propaganda. But like the Founders, even Union hero Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that Americans have “a revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow [government]” that ceases to represent them. Once your government gets in the business of rigging elections, you’ve reached that point.
Democracy in the United States is failing and Plan A (Biden, Pelosi & Schumer defeat fascism) is clearly not working. We desperately need a Plan B if we and future generations of Americans hope to live free.
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P.S. For anyone interested in this topic, Blue Independence strongly recommends the following two books:
“Break it Up” by author/journalist Richard Kreitner
“Making a New American Constitution” by Georgetown University Law Center visiting scholar George William Van Cleve
