We Can Have Unity or We Can Have Freedom. We Can't Have Both.

We can have unity or we can have freedom.

We can't have both by Ryan MacMacon.

The idea of political unity has long been a popular trope

and slogan in politics.

He's a uniter, not a divider, is a sentiment

that many American politicians like to cultivate

about themselves.

Over many centuries and across many jurisdictions,

we encounter the claim that unity is a political virtue

and that anything that divides us must therefore be condemned.

Some even label opposition to unity as a type of treason.

So it makes sense that political unity is often

the language employed by those who seek to enhance

and increase the power of the state.

Since the advent of nationalism in the late 18th century,

unity has been a common rallying cry.

In attempts to hammer together strong national states

over the objections of local powers and minority populations.

Those who weren't on the winning end of unification

could see that political unity would actually obliterate

the independence and self-determination

of those in the minority.

Put another way, unity has long been the slogan

and goal of those who are in the business of state building.

Consider, for example, the nationalists of 19th century Italy

and Germany or the French revolutionaries.

The Soviet political system was highly unified within the party

and within the state itself.

All of these revolutionary regimes proclaim

political unity to be one of their chief goals.

The United States has certainly been no different.

Thanks to the Civil War in the 1860s,

the rise of the administrative state in the 1930s

and the triumph of the national security state since 1945,

the United States has become progressively more unified

under an increasingly powerful central state.

In all of these cases, political unity

has triumphed over regionalism, secession,

and local self-governance.

Moreover, the reality of political unity

and practice illustrates that it is a tool used

to extinguish freedom and the crucial political decentralization

that has historically been the foundation of human liberty

in the Western tradition.

While unity sounds like a nice thing to have,

when it comes to politics and nation-states,

experience repeatedly shows that we can have unity

or we can have freedom.

We can't have both.

Unity is a great thing in the private sector

and in private life.

With non-state institutions,

unity is voluntary and not imposed by politicians

wielding coercive power.

Families and religious groups are wonderful

when the people within them enjoy unity.

However, no one is forced to unite within a family

or a parish at the point of a gun.

Those who wish to leave the group may do so

and those who remain continue to be unified.

States do not function this way

and as they become larger and more diverse,

the more they tend to rely on coercion.

Polities with people of relatively uniform cultures

and economic interests living within a limited space

can embrace unity with relatively small levels of force

as Carlo Lotieri puts it.

In a tiny community, it is easier for people

to share the same claims.

In other words, a small political community

is more homogenous and less heterogeneity

drives us to a society where only a few people

are forced to submit to a common opinion

that conflicts with their wills.

The use of force is expensive, however,

so states often attempt to offset the need

for coercive measures through the use of propaganda.

This solution has proven to be far from perfect,

so it inevitably fails and states ultimately must resort

to the usual means of violence to impose unity.

Consequently, any group that wishes to secede

from the unified whole faces violent opposition from the state.

Minority populations will soon find themselves

at the mercy of the majority back deletes

who wield a monopoly over the means of coercion,

the 20th century illusion of American unity.

Many Americans get nostalgic for the alleged good old days

when it is believed that America was unified.

It's somewhat unclear to which historical period

they're referring.

Obviously, the US was not unified in the 19th century

in terms of culture, religion, politics, or even language.

The United States was held together as a fairly loose

confederation of self-governing states

that endured huge influxes of immigrants

from Germany, England, and Ireland.

Later came waves of Italians and Eastern Europeans.

Catholics were hated by old guard of wasps.

Irish were considered to be somewhere

between Anglo-Saxons and apes.

The fight over prohibition is just one example

of the utter lack of cultural uniformity

in the United States before the Second World War.

So when we hear of the golden age of political unity,

one must conclude that nostalgia is referring

to the mid-20th century when the so-called liberal consensus

prevailed.

This was a time when the overwhelming majority

of Americans subscribed to a narrow ideology

that favored New Deal welfare programs,

Keynesian economics, and anti-Soviet foreign policy.

There were some mile variations in this view

which manifested themselves in partisan competition

between the two major respectable political parties.

This unity was in large part maintained

by government-approved messaging relentlessly reinforced

by public schools and mass media.

The range of allowable opinion was defined by what one saw

on the three major television networks

and corresponding radio affiliates

which monopolized virtually all media content.

Many Americans consequently believed themselves

to be free, although their views of culture, religion,

and politics nearly always fell

within the ideological window dictated

by cradle-to-grave messaging control.

Those who departed from the acceptable views

were generally locked out of positions of influence

by universities, book publishers, television stations,

and others.

Many didn't know that other opinions

were even possible for reasonable people.

Minority groups, whether ideological, racial, or religious,

were generally ignored by media and were largely invisible.

Although some civil unrest and resistance

broke out every now and then, the economic growth

of the 30 glorious years helped

combined with a sustained media propaganda

to give the impression that the tenuous political unity

of the time was voluntary.

Events like Eisenhower's use of the National Guard

against Arkansas in 1957 is so notable

because that sort of thing was generally unnecessary

in that period.

But those days are over.

The liberal consensus broke down in the late 1970s

as new economic realities exposed the truth

about the state's Keynesian economic system.

The end of the Cold War further removed

one of the most important foundations

of American state power, using a foreign threat

to train the populace, to be forever fearful,

and accept whatever the state wanted to dish out

in the name of defeating communism.

Over the past 25 years, fueled by failed wars,

the growing surveillance state,

and the inflationist corporate bailouts,

ideological division and crisis has only grown.

This was further sped up by the COVID panic,

which in the eyes of millions obliterated

the legitimacy of medical, governmental,

and educational institutions.

Since COVID, virtually everything has come to be

correctly seen as ideological,

and in the service of exercising political power

over enemies.

The red-state, blue-state divide unity

will need to be imposed by force.

With the breakdown of the old consensus

combined with a weakening economy and a growing realization

that the federal government does not actually represent

anyone but wealthy donors in the permanent government.

We can expect more and more resistance to federal edicts

on everything from medical policy to drugs

and to immigration and abortion.

Just as a policies of state-level nullification

has worked to weaken federal laws against marijuana,

we will continue to see more efforts to use state and local laws

as a means of countering federal actions

and delegitimizing federal enforcement.

Historically, this method was also successfully used

to weaken federal fugitive slave laws.

Those who favor political unity will then insist

on employing ever greater levels of federal power

to force unity and compliance.

We see this dynamic at work right now

in the conflict over immigration,

pro-immigrant forces, now no longer in power in Washington,

are attempting to use state and local policies

as well as the mobilization of activists

to oppose action in Washington.

Not surprisingly, with a Republican in the White House,

the fiercest opposition to federal action

has come in so-called blue states

where local populations and officials are most resistant.

As a result, the advocates of federal anti-immigration policies

have been demanding more federal power

to further expand the police powers of federal agencies.

As the opponents of unity push back against the central state,

the response from above is to further increase federal power,

so as to force unity where it cannot be gained

through more subtle means.

This situation changes, depending on which political party

is in control of federal regulatory and police powers.

States and cities and ideological minorities

that exercise more power regionally than nationally

will look to the use of non-federal power

as a means of insulating locals from federal power.

This has been seen on issues such as abortion,

immigration, drugs, guns, and health care,

or some will resort to popular resistance

as with anti-COVID lockdown protesters

and anti-vaccine activists.

In each case, whichever political coalition is in power

in Washington will demand unity and compliance

with federal policy.

For example, when Barack Obama was in power,

it was the state governments and activist groups

who attempted to use state law

to counter the administration's immigrant policies.

Just as the Trump supporters presently demand

federally imposed political unity,

the Obama administration at the time similarly declared,

states are trying to supplant the federal government's role

in setting immigration policy,

and we can't have 50 different immigration policies.

Thus we hear echoed yet again the perennial slogan

of those who favor centralized power

and political unity imposed from above.

The central government must have the last say

and be able to dictate uniform policy

to every corner of the regime's territory.

Right now, under Trump, this sounds pretty good

to anti-immigration activists.

But after inauguration day on 2029,

it will most likely sound much less good.

As federal agents move to unify the country yet again

by enforcing federal edicts on everything

from guns to vaccines to health care and more.

This cycle will continue to spiral

toward greater despotism,

so long as the United States endures

as the increasingly unitary state that it has become.

Each new administration will prompt out-of-power groups

to resist federal power,

and this will be followed by ratcheting up federal power

to ensure that America remains united.

The result will be exactly what we have witnessed

over the past century.

And ever larger federal government in which the pursuit

of unity justifies an ever tighter federal grip

on the nation.

There will be no escape from this

until Americans finally abandon their romantic

and naive view of unity and begin to demand disunity,

division, secession, and the dissolution

of the American state.

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