Not long ago, voters in 33 Illinois counties voted to leave Illinois and become part of Indiana. Twelve counties in eastern Oregon--perhaps America's wokest state-- voted to leave the Beaver State to become part of Idaho. And in Texas, a robust secession movement has been active for many years.
What's going on?
Clearly, Americans are dividing into two camps. Blue State residents vote Democratic and are comfortable with the Democrats' woke agenda, which includes heavy government intervention in the national economy, transgender participation in girls' sports, and open borders.
Red State voters tend to hold traditional cultural values that emphasize patriotism, family, and Christianity. Red State voters are suspicious of federal regulations, and they're frightened by the Democrats' open border policies and the insertion of woke values in the public schools.
As a map of national voting patterns illustrates, Blue and Red states are geographically distinct. The Blue states are mostly clustered on the East and West Coasts, while the Republican-leaning Red states comprise the South, the Midwestern plains, and the Rocky Mountains west (except for Colorado and New Mexico).
As Abraham Lincoln observed in a 1858 speech, "a house divided cannot stand," and we are a divided nation. I thought the 2024 election results might usher in an era of political calm, but the election of Donald Trump for a second presidential term has been met by calls for resistance and a "civic uprising" by the coastal elites. Trump's enemies have filed well over 100 lawsuits to sabotage his political agenda.
What does the future hold? I think it is unlikely that conservative populations in woke states will be able to break away and join more conservative states. The conservative counties in Illinois will never be able to escape to Indiana, nor will the eastern counties of Oregon ever become part of Greater Idaho.
Nevertheless, America's political and cultural divide is becoming sharper and more contentious by the day. I live off a gravel road in rural Mississippi, where cultural values are as different from Boston as Congo is different from Canada. America is now truly two separate countries.
America today is becoming more and more like the United States in 1860. As Bruce Catton, Erik Larson, and others have explained, by the eve of the Civil War, the radical abolitionists in New England and the rabid pro-slavery advocates in South Carolina despised each other and actually longed for war.
And war is what they got.
Unless academia, Democratic politicians, and the legacy media show more respect for the hard-working and decent people of Flyover Country, the nation will one day fall apart. If that occurs, my loyalties will be with Flyover Country--my doctoral degree from Harvard notwithstanding.
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2024 Presidential Election Results by County |