Right-Wing Entertains Secession, Claims To Be Peaceful Despite Language Calling For "Civil War"

There is an interesting article over at the Center for Individual Freedom written by Robert E. Lee Timothy H. Lee, regarding secession.  You heard it.  The word that caused the civil war over 100 years ago.  Lee asks the question "after 230 years, are the American people coursing toward eventual divorce?"

Our polarized society increasingly ponders what would happen if American conservatives and liberals simply agreed that their differences had become irreconcilable, and redivided the nation to go their separate ways. Which side would prosper and experience an influx of migration from the other? Conversely, which side would likely become a fiscal and socio-political basket case?

Is Lee really entertaining the thought of secession, or is he using such dangerous rhetoric to make a point? It appears to be a little bit of both, but the article weighs heavier on the actual thought of secession, which Lee calls a hypothetical question, despite trying to give as much credibility to the subject as humanly possible.

Lee claims that conservatives do it better and that liberals are ruining the country and that the thought of secession has been voiced more frequently in recent years, by both Republicans and Democrats. While he cites a couple sources that refer to the current ideological conflict as a peaceful civil war, or that conservatives, who supposedly represent a majority of Americans, should engage in Gandhi style tactics to get their way, Lee takes it one step further, and following the lead of his right-wing fringe contemporaries, he references founding father Thomas Jefferson. While Lee himself writes that "whatever one’s views toward such sentiment, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny the irreconcilable ideals of “red” and “blue” Americans despite efforts to reestablish unity." He then goes on to state the following:

Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence that irreconcilable values sometimes make it “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another.” Jefferson further recognized the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, stating that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles.”

To Lee, America should always be in conservative control, and that the Democrats rise to power in recent years is only temporary, and based on the language Lee is using, it would be safe to assume that he is all for a civil war against the federal government to get conservatives back in power. I bet, if given the opportunity, Lee would have signed up to become a member of the Hutaree.