As Our Political Divide Grows, Is It Time to Part Company?

SYNDICATED COLUMNIST WALTER WILLIAMS HAS BEEN asking the same politically charged question for over ten years: "If one group of people prefers government control and its invitable management of people's lives and another group prefers less government, more liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences on the other or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?"

Williams believes our nation is fast approaching a schism of irreconcilable differences not unlike a marriage crisis that has come to the boiling point over broken vows, as in constitutional vows. Rather than continuing the power struggles, endless talk or escalating opposing differences to the point of violence, Williams wonders if it's not time to consider a separation:

I believe we are nearing a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. The Democrat-controlled Washington is simply an escalation of a process that has been in full stride for at least two decades. There is no evidence that Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have any intention of mending their ways.

Williams certainly raises an interesting question. While peaceful separation sounds like a good idea to me, it begs the question of what such a separation would look like and how it would be constitutionally accomplished---peacefully? Would it be a separation or divorce? Would it involve peaceful secession, or is that an oxymoron? Would we divide up all the states into red and blue and have all the strict constitutionalists moving to red territories and all the nanny staters moving to blue?

It hardly sounds peaceful to me, since nanny state voters would need endless child/adult support from us tax paying citizens----most of whom would be high-tailing it to red strongholds holding onto whatever was left of their over-taxed assets.

Ah well, it's a great thought anyway. I like the way Williams is thinking. But I myself just don't see the words separation and peaceful together in our future anytime soon. It's a great thought though. And remember, all Scotch-Irish gun owners will all be going red--- peacefully or otherwise. I doubt that they'll go quietly into the night myself.