Is This the End of the American Experiment?
Our unfolding constitutional crisis
In my previous essay, I suggested that the American Constitution is “old and tired,” ill-equipped in several specific ways to handle the overwhelming challenges of our time. I raised the disturbing possibility that the nation’s inability to meet these challenges could herald “the potential end of the American experiment.”
That was a dramatic statement, suggesting questions that I promised to ask in a later article: Is the collapse of the American republic “inevitable, maybe even necessary, and, if achieved peacefully, could it be beneficial in some ways? Or would it be a tragic and preventable disaster?” Now it is time to wrestle with these hard questions. The answers are far from simple.
In that essay I expressed pessimism that passing a batch of much-needed amendments or calling a new convention to write a twenty-first century update of the Constitution were at all likely at this point. A more plausible scenario is that we continue to muddle along as we are doing, with a dysfunctional government, intensive polarization and widespread cynicism…until we no longer can.
But what then? What if the republic is unable to weather the storms of populism, demagoguery, conspiracy thinking and corruption and actually falls apart? States and regions would withdraw from the federal union and form new, alternative nations. The United States as we know it would come to an end.
I was drawn to study American history because of my strong affinity for the Enlightenment ideals that brought the United States into being. Despite all the flaws, shortcomings and injustices that pockmark our history, this nation — at least, the idea of this nation — has been a beacon of hope for humanity. The values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution represented a dramatic step of progress in human history.
We sought to replace rule by force and privilege with the rule of law and reason. We demonstrated how “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” could actually work, and have gradually expanded who is included in “the people.” Millions of immigrants have uprooted their lives in search of opportunity, dignity and liberty here. It sounds trite to say that, but it is a self-evident demographic truth.
So it is no small realization to accept the possibility that this great historic experiment has run its course. The breakup of the United States would be tragic. The breakdown of our institutions and political culture that is actually occurring is already tragic. Those who commit insurrection or threaten secession in a fit of self-righteousness do not seem to realize what they, and humanity at large, stand to lose. The aphorism about babies and bathwater applies here.
To be worried about the loss of America as we know it is not to endorse American “exceptionalism” or blind patriotism. It is rather to recognize that the idea of America — a republic rooted in human rights and democratic participation — was a gift to humanity. Some nations and cultures emulated this model and have thrived; others have rejected it and lived with the consequences. If the idea fails here, if we cannot keep our republic, what hope is there for the rest of the world?
And who would we be ourselves? For 250 years we have identified ourselves as “Americans,” and our common loyalty to the founding ideals, to the Constitution itself, has knitted together the most diverse population of any single nation. If we lose this identity, the resulting existential void would be unbearable, and we could fill it by reverting to so many varieties of tribalism, some of which could become rampagingly violent.
So this is one way to look at the questions I’ve raised. From this perspective, the meltdown of America would lead to disaster and is not likely to be beneficial except to enemies of liberal democracy everywhere. In a very practical sense, if the “red” regions of America take their toys and leave, or if the entire federation dissolves into its constituent cultures (as many as eleven of them!), the remaining entity would not have the political or military power to effectively contend with whatever imperial designs those enemies entertain.
Splintering tribalism at home and menacing threats from abroad — exactly what the framers were concerned about when they forged the Constitution in the first place.
But let us reconsider the original questions: Is it possible that the dissolution of the United States is inevitable or necessary, regardless of the tremendous dislocations it would cause? Would there be anything beneficial in a realignment of political and cultural boundaries on this part of the continent, especially if that could be accomplished peacefully?
Who is to say whether this or any historical event is “inevitable”? Still, for the reasons I recounted in my earlier essay, our present frame of government may be obsolete in the face of modern conditions (globalization, individualism, partisanship, supercharged communications media…), and so its collapse should not be unexpected. It would be painful, but it might be necessary to redefine our national identity. That would be a last resort, but we should be prepared to make that leap if nothing else is working.
During the Bush II administration and its global “war on terror,” I fell in with a tiny group of genteel radical intellectuals who were proposing that Vermont separate itself from the militaristic, global-capitalist empire that the U.S. had become. I never fully embraced the idea of actual secession, but I thought the time had come to ask severe questions about the concentration of political and economic power in this colossal nation-state. In the introduction to a collection of our essays called Most Likely to Secede, I wrote this:
We view the machinations of the U.S. government as part and parcel of a contemporary trend toward endless growth, consolidation, centralization, and domination by powerful institutions, including not only the state but also corporations and lobbying interests, the media, universities and school systems, the medical establishment, and well, just about every aspect of modern life. [We] have argued that this emerging empire destroys as much as it creates, diminishes and despoils the natural world, impoverishes many while it enriches a select few, and imposes its will through exploitation and violence.
The solution, we have argued, lies in a return to the local, the regional, the bioregional — to intimate and participatory forms of democracy and economic practices that respect the health and autonomy of our communities, as well as the integrity of the land and the biosphere.
We were not repudiating the ideals of the Constitution, but warning that the nation had become too large, too complex, and too centralized to fully live up to those ideals. Government had become the servant of corporate interests and was no longer authentically “of the people.” We did not want to toss out the “baby,” but the “bathwater” had become so filthy that some major change was necessary.
There were (and still are) secession/independence movements in other parts of the country, but many of them are motivated by values quite different from those we held. This brought up a conundrum for Vermont’s progressive secessionists: Should the others be seen as allies in challenging centralized power, or should we be critical of their values? There was a contradiction in calling for the Bill of Rights, the Reconstruction amendments, or the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts to be vigorously enforced in those states by the same federal government we were wanting to defang.
This contradiction stems from the historical and political fact that the U.S. is an artificial amalgam of disparate cultures. The framers made significant compromises to keep northern and southern (particularly slaveholding) states, more and less populated states, and commercial and agricultural interests unified. Different parts of the country have chafed at these compromises throughout our history. Different interests have taken power at different times and sought to make their preferred cultural values supreme.
This is a volatile, unstable arrangement, and what we are seeing today may well be the climax of these tensions. The Civil War — a thoroughly ugly explosion of hatred and violence — settled political conflict up to a point and for a time, but it did not erase underlying cultural differences. It may be that peaceful separation of America’s diverse regions is the most humane way to resolve these centuries-old tensions.
I don’t want to admit that, but I think we have come to a point where we need to consider the possibility.
What a dilemma! Fight like hell to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” the revered fount of our national identity — or recognize that such a fight might now be futile, a lost cause. It may be most realistic to begin a long and painful process of adjusting to the insistent realities of the twenty-first century, which have rendered that founding document increasingly impotent.
It is a terrible choice to have to make.
