I Have Some Questions For Erick Erickson About His Plan to Break Up the United States

Erick Erickson, a right-wing radio host and New York Times contributor famous for takes such as “gay men in bars should expect to be assaulted,” is horrified, simply horrified, by the violent rhetoric coming from the left these days. On Monday, Erickson expressed his horror with a provocative idea: “Let’s Consider Secession.”

The premise of Erickson’s piece is basically: Given the hyper-partisan state of American politics, Americans would do best to segregate themselves by ideology, because federalism. It’s what the Founding Fathers would have wanted.

I am being completely honest when I say it is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I’ve ever read (emphasis mine):

From Nazism to Communism to progressivism itself, there has been more butchery from leftwing ideologies throughout human history than from the right — and yes despite popular historic revisionism, Nazism is from the left and had an American progressive fan club that included Margaret Sanger, patron saint of killing kids. On college campuses, conservatives are chased away by mobs and the left excuses it. After all, they say, the right deserved it. Steve Scalise deserved it. The Christian bigot needs to bake the cake, but the performer who does not want to perform for President Trump is a saint.

There is only a one way street and the crowd that demands tolerance only wants tolerance for themselves. All others must be silenced.

The political left is becoming the American ISIS.

Under Erickson’s plan, good, patriotic conservatives would get Texas, while evil, baby-murdering terrorist libs would get California, and so on:

In our present atmosphere there is no escape from the American ISIS that is the political left. Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant and then it seeks to silence good. Evil is now dominant — but the partisan line is blurred.

The only escape is dissolution. We should part ways if we cannot have federalism. We should start talking about secession. If both sides have decided that every hill is a hill to die on and control of Washington means reward for their friends and punishment of their enemies, we need to end Washington. The way to do that is end the union.

Sure, we already fought a war over this, and Erickson’s side (Erickson lives in Georgia) lost miserably. But hope for an ideologically segregated apartheid state springs eternal.

Curiously, Erickson quickly followed up his original post with a “corrective” that effectively doubled down on his original point. In the second post, Erickson refers ominously to the “five black robed masters” of the Ivy League who, apparently, control every facet of American culture.

Reading Erickson’s columns, I was left with some logistical questions. Namely: How should America go about its great ideological self-segregation? I wanted to get to the bottom of these questions, so I did what any gumshoe reporter would do: I emailed him.

Here’s the email I sent Erickson yesterday afternoon:

Hi Erick,

I’m a political reporter at Fusion, as well as a big fan of your work. I read your most recent column, “Let’s Consider Secession,” with much interest.

Still, I came away from your column with a few logistical questions that I was hoping you’d be able to clear up.

In your follow-up post, you write: “When we have five black robed masters who can force 320 million people to adhere to the morals of the Ivy League at the expense of local values, we have a real problem as a nation.” Could you specify who these “five black robed masters” are? Sounds like something to look into.

Here are my questions:

How would secession play out, logistically? Will government forces relocate conservatives from blue states and liberals from red states? Or will people be allowed to relocate freely as they see fit? In other words, if “the only escape is dissolution,” as you write, who in the United States should secede from whom, and how should they go about doing that?

You write, “The political left is becoming the American ISIS.” Following your logic, it seems the U.S. government would be wise to execute pre-emptive drone strikes on hotspots of leftism, as they are essentially terrorist sleeper cells. (The UC-Berkeley campus is one obvious target.) Would you support a domestic drone strikes on the terrorist training grounds known as “liberal arts colleges”?

Why stop at secession? After all, shouldn’t we be rewarding Americans who support our country’s values, and punishing those who reject them. Perhaps the U.S. could implement some sort of concentrated labor program for liberals (a camp of sorts?) to teach them the value of hard work.

What do you think about Apartheid in South Africa? Could it work here, even though it didn’t work out over there? Just a thought to consider. People within the PC ISIS left I’ve talked to won’t even consider bringing back Jim Crow, let alone an Apartheid state. How do I convince them this is in their best interest?

If you could get back to me with your answers sometime today, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks again for writing such a provocative column.

Happy Juneteenth!

Emma Roller

I did not hear back from Erickson, though, perhaps prompted by my email, he today published yet another followup in which he explained that he was “more provocative than necessary” in order to make a point about how “both sides need to calm their rhetoric.” If you agree with Erick that everyone could stand to cool it a little bit, why not print out his blog post about an ideological partitioning of the United States, shoot the words “A PROVOCATIVE THOUGHT EXERCISE” into it with your gun, and mail it to him?