Hardly anyone disagrees Americans are divided, or that our divisions are problematic.  But could continual political partisanship and polarization actually fracture the United States into multiple nations?  What is the likely outcome or potential risks if we do not find a way to reverse the negative polarization?  What are the preconditions for state secessions, and how close are we to meeting those preconditions?  Is the United States facing another civil war, acrimonious divorce, or eventual reconciliation?

 

Those are precisely the questions David French sets out to answer in his new book Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.  David joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the threats political polarization represent for the United States, what our history can tell us about the likelihood of these dangers, and how returning to the Madisonian blueprint of the extended republic may offer the solutions to many of the controversial political battles today.

 

David French is an Iraqi war veteran, attorney, free speech and religious liberties advocate, political commentator, and author who has been at the center of some of the hottest political battles over the past four years.  His name was used to coin the term Frenchism to describe a deference to classical liberalism and opposition to the new nationalism and authoritarianism on the Right (see the Saving Elephants article on Frenchism for more information).

 

French has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom, has lectured at Cornell Law School, and spent much of his career working on religious-rights issues.  He served as president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).  He retired from FIRE in 2005, citing plans to serve in the United States Army Reserve as a judge advocate general officer.  He was a staff writer for National Review from 2015 to 2019, and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.  In 2019 French left National Review to join the conservative news site The Dispatch as a senior editor.