April 17, 2023
The New Mason-Dixon Line
By: Brian Almon
The divide between North and South that exploded into the Civil War was not just about slavery. The North was industrial, the South agrarian. Many Northerners and Southerners were descended from opposite sides of the English Civil War two centuries prior. The North believed in a strong central government, while the South believed that states were ultimately sovereign.
All of these differences came to a flashpoint over the issue of slavery, and led to a war that killed 600,000 American soldiers and countless civilians. The culture and economy of the South was ruined for a generation, and the scars from that conflict are used to justify political repercussions to this day.
Slavery was not the direct cause of the Civil War – secession was. But slavery was the animating dynamic, the singular issue that best exemplified the divide in the country that had existed since before the Revolution.
Last week, my former home state of Washington passed S5599, essentially giving the state the authority to take custody of children they determine to be at risk. If a child runs away from home, claiming that his or her parents are not supporting their transgender status, the state can take the child to an undisclosed location and give them drugs and even surgery without notifying the parents.
It’s a very small step from this to the state outright removing children from their homes. Imagine a scenario where a counselor, schoolteacher, or CPS agent sees a little boy playing with a doll and decides he is transgender.
Last week I wrote about how we are creating a culture of life in Idaho. Other states like Washington, Oregon, California, and Colorado are creating a culture of death. This is deepening a divide in our country that is just as stark as the Mason-Dixon Line was in 1860. States like Idaho say that propagandizing, drugging, and mutilating children is abusive. States like Washington say that withholding such things from children is abusive. There can be no compromise between those two positions.
The dispute over slavery in the 19th century came to a head when it crossed state lines. The two major issues were the expansion of slavery into new territories as well as what to do with fugitive slaves captured in free states. The former is no longer an issue, as the borders of our country have remained static for more than a century now. The latter, however, already has a modern echo in the case of Jeff Younger. As you might recall, Jeff is a citizen of Texas whose ex-wife has been trying to transition his son. She was recently granted full custody and plans to take the boy to California, which has made itself into a sanctuary state for transitioning children.
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act said that escaped slaves captured in free states must be returned to their owners in the South. It was part of a series of compromises between the two factions that delayed the onset of civil war. Today, there is no federal guidance on what to do when one parent plans to take a child to a pro-trans state while the other wants to keep him safe in a state like Texas or Idaho. What happens when Jeff Younger’s ex-wife takes his son across state lines en route to a genital mutilation clinic, and he petitions the Texas Rangers to intervene?
YouTuber Tim Pool has brought up this exact scenario several times as a possible flashpoint for a second civil war. Auron MacIntyre interviewed The Prudentialist last week about what the latter calls Bleeding Transas, explicitly comparing our moment in history to Bleeding Kansas, which was in a way the first bloodshed of the Civil War.
The question before us is what are we prepared to do to protect the culture of life we are trying to inculcate in our state? How do we respond when Washington and Oregon advertise abortion on demand, no questions asked, to our citizens? How can we prepare for situations like Jeff Younger’s where one parent wants to take a child across state lines and mutilate them, while the other parent disagrees?
Many conservatives, afraid of fighting the culture war, will be tempted to compromise, to find some common ground, just as the 19th century statesmen did over slavery. But there is no common ground on this issue. Either giving children irreversible drugs, hormones, and surgeries is good, or it is evil. We must hold the line on the sanctity of life, even if the federal government and our neighboring states are all against us, because it’s the right thing to do.
Do not look for a solution at the federal level. Most Republicans with national profiles are unwilling to wade into this fight. Our best course of action, as usual, is to focus on local and state government. Are your public libraries stocking the children’s shelves with pro-trans propaganda? Are your public schools using sex ed curricula that urge children to see themselves as trans or non-binary?
In 1860, the Mason-Dixon Line was pretty straightforward. After Abraham Lincoln’s election that year, seven states voted to secede from the Union. Four more joined them after Lincoln called for a volunteer army to put down the so-called rebellion. The remaining four slave states were divided – Lincoln used federal troops to prevent them from joining the Confederacy as well.
The new Mason-Dixon Line is not so neat, as this county map of the 2020 presidential election results demonstrates:
Nearly every blue state is geographically red with one or two mega blue cities. Take Chicago out of Illinois and that state votes Republican every time. Same with Seattle in Washington, Portland in Oregon, Denver in Colorado, and Las Vegas in Nevada. It is these big blue cities that are driving the trans agenda, as well as the rest of the far left program in America.
That is why I am interested in projects such as Greater Idaho, which seeks to move the counties east of the Cascade Mountains from Oregon to Idaho. While such an endeavor would undoubtedly be complex, and result in many unforeseen consequences, it would at least give families in Pendleton, Burns, and La Grande peace of mind that the government won’t be coming soon to transition their children at gunpoint.
This is why it is so important to understand what time it is in the lifecycle of the American Republic. How can we waste time arguing about marginal tax rates when children in blue states are being targeted by the government for mutilation? That is akin to worrying about the price of stamps in 1860 when the nation was on the verge of splitting apart.
What we need in Idaho specifically is a set of strong state laws regarding abortion and child mutilation that will protect our families while encouraging those deluded souls who support such barbarism to leave. Conservative families in blue states should move to red states as quickly as possible as well. Eventually, demographics win out – red states have families, while blue states abort and castrate their own children.
Of course, so long as the left controls public schools they will keep multiplying their ranks and diminishing ours. That is why conservatives should homeschool if they can, or find a solid private school. Education choice is the issue of our time, as it is necessary to give a critical mass of families the ability to opt out of the leftist indoctrination. The only reason that such anti-family and anti-human doctrines such as abortion and transgenderism have gotten traction in this country is because the left controls every facet of society. Children are bathed in leftist doctrines from preschool through college, and then in every corporate HR department, news outlet, and entertainment venue. Turn off those spigots of propaganda and you’ll see a return to normalcy, a return to common sense ideas such as men are men and women are women.
As much as I respect the heroism of the Confederates – one of my ancestors fought on that side, while several others fought for the Union – they lost the moral high ground. The American Revolution succeeded largely due to support from France, which was willing to support the high-minded ideals of the Declaration of Independence, while kicking their enemies in Britain at the same time. On the other hand, the would-be second revolution of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee failed because Abraham Lincoln successfully cast the war as being fought over slavery. If the War Between the States was simply about self-determination, then perhaps England or France would have been willing to intercede. When it became a war to liberate men from the yoke of slavery, nations that had already banned the peculiar institution hesitated to get involved.
I believe history will judge abortion and transgender surgeries as harshly as it does slavery, which means that conservative leaders have a chance to seize the moral high ground as well. Despite being surrounded by propaganda, the average person knows that chopping off healthy body parts in children is not a good thing, no matter what euphemisms or excuses are made by LGBTQ+ advocates. Yet they’re afraid of going against the zeitgeist. They’re worried about what their neighbors might think.
Prior to 2015’s Obergefell decision, most conservatives opposed gay marriage – remember that even California voted decisively to enshrine the traditional definition of marriage in their state constitution – but once the decision was made, most people have simply come around to supporting it. Americans love a winner, as Patton said, and popular support often follows victory, rather than preceding it.
As we create a culture of life in our states, we must loudly proclaim the rightness of our cause and the justice of protecting children from irreversible harm. That is a winning message, both morally and politically.
Note: A descendant of American pioneers, Brian writes about the importance of culture and about current events in the context of history. His work can be found on Substack, here.
