So Long, Pardner
by Hendrik Hertzberg May 4, 2009
QUESTION: What do you think about the idea of secession or sovereignty for your state?
GOVERNOR PERRY, OF TEXAS: Oh, I think there’s a lot of different scenarios.
On April 15th, a.k.a. tax day, protest rallies promoted by conservative lobbyists and Fox News television hosts attracted a couple of hundred thousand people to a couple of hundred locations around the country. The rallies were called “tea parties”—more mad than Boston, by the look and sound of them—with “tea” standing for “Taxed Enough Already.” The partygoers’ main target was President Obama’s plan for an enormous tax hike, under which, starting in 2011, persons with incomes in excess of a quarter-million dollars could see their top marginal rate go from thirty-five per cent to 39.6. This means that a fellow making, for example, three hundred grand could see his tax bill go up $34.62 per week. (In a typical liberal trick, most people making under a quarter mil, which is to say ninety-seven per cent of us, are getting a reduction.)
Lifting the burden of taxation from the backs of the comfortable is no longer the exciting new panacea it was back in the nineteen-eighties. But another proposal that the tea parties were buzzing about merits the respectful consideration of concerned citizens: Governor Rick Perry’s suggestion that Texas might end its association with the United States of America and strike out on its own.
Independence wouldn’t be a huge stretch for Texas. It already has its own national flag, left over from its decade as a sovereign republic. As a result, transition expenses should be minimal. At the Austin tea party, Governor Perry, still flushed with the excitement of denouncing federal oppression from the platform, told reporters, “When we came in the union, in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.” He added, a little ominously:
My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We’ve got a great Union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what might come out of that.
Or, translated into New Yorkese: Nice little Union you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
The Governor is mistaken about Texas having been admitted to the Union with an opt-out provision; the actual deal was that Texas, with Congress’s permission, could theoretically divide itself into five states. Exiting the United States is not as simple as resigning from a restricted country club. Since “the Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union” (Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Texas v. White, 1869), Perry would need either a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court chock-full of Scaliaesque “originalists.”
Putting aside the technicalities, though, what about the merits? Secession has been in questionable odor ever since Fort Sumter, but there are big differences between then and now. The cause of the Civil War was slavery, and the white South’s determination, in Lincoln’s phrase, “to strengthen, perpetuate, and extend” it. That was something worth fighting against, if not worth fighting for. But a difference of opinion about a marginal tax rate? There is, to be sure, a superficial parallel: just as only a minority of Southern whites owned slaves, only a tiny minority of Texans are due for a tax increase. It’s an aspirational thing. According to a poll taken the other day, a mere third of the people of the Lone Star State, and only half of Texas Republicans, are currently inclined to secede. But, if the numbers mount, might it not be better for all concerned if we just let Texas—and, by extension, any other parts of the old Confederacy that wish to accompany it—go?
Despite Perry’s fighting words, there is no reason for the separation to be an occasion for violence. The globe is replete with two-state solutions: India and Pakistan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Israel and Palestine. Admittedly, these may not be the best examples. A closer parallel would be Czechoslovakia, which, in 1993, split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Like Czechs and Slovaks, Americans and Texans speak closely related languages, share a common, if not equally intense, interest in football games (though the Dallas Cowboys could no longer style themselves “America’s Team”), and enjoy each other’s cuisines. (Houston has a number of acceptable organic fusion restaurants, and there is a pretty fair barbecue place just a block from The New Yorker’s offices.) The border between the United States and the Federated States (“Confederate” being a word that remains a little too provocative) might not be as trouble-free as that between the United States and Canada, but, compared to the border with Mexico, it would probably require somewhat fewer armed citizen militias and fences topped with concertina wire to thwart illegal aliens desperate for a better life. On balance, trade relations between the U.S. and the F.S. would be advantageous to both. Cultural exchanges, tourism, and even a degree of military coöperation would be far from unthinkable.
For the old country, the benefits would be obvious. A more intimately sized Congress would briskly enact sensible gun control, universal health insurance, and ample support for the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. Although Texas itself has been a net contributor to the Treasury—it gets back ninety-four cents for each dollar it sends to Washington—nearly all the other potential F.S. states, especially the ones whose politicians complain most loudly about the federal jackboot, are on the dole. (South Carolina, for example, receives $1.35 on the dollar, as compared with Illinois’s seventy-five cents.) Republicans would have a hard time winning elections for a generation or two, but eventually a responsible opposition party would emerge, along the lines of Britain’s Conservatives, and a normal alternation in power could return.
The Federated States, meanwhile, could get on with the business of protecting the sanctity of marriage, mandating organized prayer sessions and the teaching of creationism in schools, and giving the theory that eliminating taxes increases government revenues a fair test. Although Texas and the other likely F.S. states already conduct some eighty-six per cent of executions, their death rows remain clogged with thousands of prisoners kept alive by meddling judges. These would be rapidly cleared out, providing more prison space for abortion providers. Although there might be some economic dislocation at first, the F.S. could remedy this by taking advantage of its eligibility for OPEC membership and arranging a new “oil shock.” Failing that, foreign aid could be solicited from Washington. But the greatest benefit would be psychological: freed from the condescension of metropolitan élites and Hollywood degenerates, the new country could tap its dormant creativity and develop a truly distinctive Way of Life.
Not every Southerner would be eager to go along with the new order, so delicate diplomacy would be a must. New Orleans might have to be made a “free city,” like Danzig (now Gdańsk) between the world wars. If partitioning Austin along the lines of Cold War Berlin proved unfeasible, peacekeeping troops might have to be sent in. But, before long, living side by side in peace and tranquillity, we could all say either “God bless the United States of America” or “God bless the Federated States,” as the case may be. ♦
