Increasingly it has become evident that the American nation, founded with such high hopes and aspirations in 1787, is expiring, dying a prolonged, painful but also virulently infectious death.

Those words are very difficult to write, especially for someone whose American ancestry goes back to Virginia in 1646, and whose ancestors helped settle other Southern states, who served honorably in both state and local elected offices, and who fought in every major war in which my state North Carolina and this country have been involved, including for the Confederacy in 1861-1865. Indeed, I think it quite conceivable that had the Confederacy been victorious in its efforts at peaceful separation in 1861, much of the later calamities and putrefaction which afflict this country might have been avoided.

Admittedly, such a statement is counterfactual. I recall at the beginning of the “Civil War Centennial” in 1960 that author MacKinlay Kantor authored a serialized work, “If the South Had Won the Civil War,” chronicling a “what if” history of America after a Southern victory in that war for Southern independence. Kantor’s scenario first appeared in instalments in Look Magazine, and then in book form in 1961. And there have been others since then.

But it has been largely in the past decade that such alternative histories seem no longer in the realm of fantasy, but actual precursors of events that could very well occur here in the USA.

Over the past five years I have written seven essays suggesting some form of national separation of the American states, perhaps even within states, that might well be the most peaceful, least violent way to alleviate the increasingly unbridgeable, implacable, and vicious divisions tearing this nation apart. Just a cursory read of the “establishment” Leftist press (e.g. The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, etc.) should convince anyone of this—anyone, that is, whose mind has not been thoroughly possessed by the demonic “woke” infection that can only be described as satanic.

The great Russian novelist, Feodor Dostoevsky, 250 years ago (in The Possessed, 1872), understood clairvoyantly both the foul and evil character of such poison, as well as the truly theological nature of such spiritual inversion. In a very real sense, he foresaw the coming not just of the Russian Revolution but also of the successive waves of what is essentially a continuing revolt against God and His Creation. (See my essay, “The Devils in the Demonstrators,” in the November 2012 issue of Chronicles magazine.)

My little essays include: “Is Secession the Answer?” at the Abbeville Institute; “Is It Time for America to Break Apart,” at The Unz Review, the Abbeville Institute, and The American Freedom Union; “Is Political Separation in Our Future?” at the Abbeville Institute; “The Future of the American Republic—How Do We Survive?” at LewRockwell.com; “The End of America? Hope Amidst the Ruins,” at The Unz Review and Reckonin.com; “National Unity is A Mirage,” at the Abbeville Institute and The Unz Review; and “The Oncoming Second American Civil War,” at LewRockwell.com and The Unz Review.

Now, in a major contribution to this much-needed discussion, Chronicles Magazine, the paramount journalistic voice for traditional conservatism in America, certainly in print form, offers a critical symposium in its October 2023 issue, titled, “The Future of the American Union.”

Featured authors include: Michael Rectenwald (“The Two Nations”), William Lind (“When the Center Does Not Hold”), and  David Azerrad (“Against the Black Pill”)—and most notably, Editor-in-Chief Paul Gottfried, whose detailed contribution, “The Future of the American Resistance,” frames the October issue.

I have written about Chronicles in the past, essentially praising its critical role in any future restoration (or recreation) of the old American republic, or, perhaps better, American republics, plural. Like any national publication with a variety of writers, there will occasionally be a piece with which I disagree; but overwhelmingly the magazine offers critical essays, reviews, and columns which should be required reading for anyone concerned by the Leftist venom which now seems destined to finally murder the Framers’ dream, imprison dissenters, destroy the nuclear family, pervert our children, and engage us in never-ending global war for unobtainable peace to establish some dystopian world “reset” worse than anything George Orwell envisaged in his classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

What is our future? What would happen if, indeed, somehow Donald Trump would manage to get past all the voter manipulation and outright dishonesty and win the 2024 election? Would there not be extreme violence, even rebellion in Blue States and in major cities? Would not states like California push harder for secession or separation?

Or, let’s suppose that the hysterical Leftist manipulators, the Deep State and their loathsome conservative/GOP collaborators, manage once again to pervert election laws and voter totals, and insure the re-election of the brain-dead puppet Joe Biden. Would those who witnessed this remain idle and simply let it happen—again?

Paul Gottfried’s essay (along with the other contributions), while diagnosing the pressing problem, also provides a potential solution. Certainly, it raises serious questions as well. But it should—it really must—be our point of departure as we sink deeper into the cesspool, the “slough of Despond,” from which there is no escape, only spiritual slavery to the powers of Darkness.

Here are Professor Gottfried’s final paragraphs which bring his essay to a close and suggest what concerned, “normal” Americans” should be considering:

The best solution, given the circumstances, is peaceful separation, a solution that can be undertaken in stages even if it cannot be achieved all at once. If Americans committed to opposing the tyrannical left can be induced to settle in common areas and if they can control local and regional administrations, then their living situation should be far from hopeless. The regime’s opponents will be in an optimal position to respond to unwelcome directives from the central state. They can simply avoid enforcing them. If this practice spreads to enough places, it will be hard for the administrative state to impose its unitary will without facing multiple challenges.

It may also be necessary for the survival of enclaves of resistance that the decision of those who choose to live under the regime be treated as irreversible, providing their decision has been reached without provable coercion. It would be foolish for those who opt for freedom to share their hard-won autonomy with those who have opted for the opposite side but who then decided to change their place of residence. Even more suicidal would be to extend full citizenship rights to those who took this step. There is no guarantee that those would-be neighbors would not be carrying with them the views and values of the place they left.

One should not confuse these hypothetical asylum seekers with former Communists who eventually fled Communist rule. Most of those refugees were staunch anti-Communists by the time they defected. Blue State residents who decide to move into Red States, by contrast, usually carry their leftist politics with them. There is no reason to think leftists will behave differently if they move into more conservative regions in the future. Regulating who settles in woke-free areas will be necessary to protect these outposts of freedom from infiltration. Therefore, any attempt by the central administration to tamper with this situation (probably by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment) must be doggedly opposed. (p.11)

Search out the October issue; better yet subscribe to Chronicles.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.