Soft Secession
The rejection of 47's Authoritarian take-over of Amerika
Every so often, civil disobedience boils over into national resistance. It cannot be otherwise when we have a self-crowned king without clothes playing Nero (mythologically or factually) and ready to burn the Constitution and the Rule of Law. There is Soft Secession. Before we proceed, we must emphasize that there already is a hard line drawn that is the legacy of the Civil War: The Racist South and the Aspirational North seeking equality and justice. Enough time will not pass before the black stain of discrimination will disappear from the pages of living history in this, our United States. In Amerika it is well and alive. Every day, the political establishments of the old Confederacy confirm their continued adherence to the precursor of fascism in Europe. Indeed, without the Civil War, the dystopias of Hitler, Stalin, and their emulators may not have been possible. Think about that. After all, there was a master race of White KKK supremacists and chattel based exclusively on pigmentation that was subject to genocidal destruction.
What is soft secession? In a world of national intradependence and international interdependence, as delightful as it may be to get rid of DeSantis, Abbott, and the other lapdogs of racism, we no longer have the option of a hard secession. California may be the world’s 4th Largest economy, but it is inextricably intertwined with the rest of the United States. Therefore, the option is to establish legal and other barriers to the intrusive reach of dictatorship by executive decree. 47 at his worst and moving ever closer to the standards set by all preceding authoritarians. In the words of French Monarch Louis XIV’s “L’état, c’est moi” — I am the State. In 47 parlance. “I have the right to do whatever I want because I’m the President of the USA.”
And yet, not every American has bought into the destruction of democracy. And paradoxically, it is the truly reactionary justices on the highest court of the land that set the precedents for red states that now allow Blue states to step back from the abyss of totalitarianism.
Ironically, it was a conservative Supreme Court that enabled Red states to circumvent, weaken, or ignore federal laws they disliked, which now opens the door to soft succession by Blue states.
And precedent goes back to the years before the Civil War, when federal law (Fugitive Slave Acts) was roundly ignored by Northern states, making these federal laws “dead letters” amid active non-cooperation.
More recently, in Printz v. United States (1997), Justice Antonin Scalia ruled the feds cannot “issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers … to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.” In Murphy v, NCAA (2018), Justice Samuel Alito ruled that federal law cannot put state legislatures under “the direct control of Congress,” via prohibitions or commands.
In other words, states cannot be forced to actively participate in federal enforcement. Without willing state cooperation, enforcement of federal law is practically unenforceable.
Soft secession is a form of civil disobedience writ large. It is a counter-offensive to the militarization of democratic cities at the whim of the naked king. It is using the genius of the Framers found in the Tenth Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It is finding that the Federal Autocracy encounters limits in those powers reserved to states, and again, paradoxically highlighted in Project 2025 as a bulwark of the future of Amerika. And yet it is here where America finds its Pritzkers and Newsomes, who establish limits to what the Center can impose on the Free States of America. Indeed, soft secession means that the restrictions, humiliations, and totalitarianization of the 47 regime have limits that cannot be easily overcome. Along with members of the Judiciary who have not sold their oath to the Constitution and have stood firm in the face of extortion and harassment, blue states are experiencing a renaissance of their restricted but impressive powers when facing fascism and intimidation.
The more pressure comes from occupied Washington, the more resistance is building with people moving from the new Confederacy to freer climates. States with reasonably intact rights ensure that rights are enshrined in their state constitutions, which cannot be undermined by federal fiat. Information and resources are shared. Coalitions of like-minded people and state governments build “soft power” defenses that the hard power of the mad king cannot breach. Laws regulating freedom of medical practice and freedom of expression are moving at breakneck speed through legislatures, anticipating the guns of lese majeste. Disobeying a tyrant is a sign of patriotism, not treason, for the tyrant has already tried to overturn an election and set free convicted criminals, erasing their treasonous insurrection mark of shame.
In the coming months, soft secession will run straight into the emergency powers invoked by the naked king, as the Insurrection Act is called upon to silence all critics. The armed forces will face the existential decision to turn their weapons against peaceful fellow citizens, betraying their oath to the Constitution or upholding it. There will be no coup d’état. But at that crossroads, the culture wars will play a critical role as Racist Neo-Confederate Governors give orders that make them as treasonous as their predecessors of the original Confederacy. Union governors will do the opposite. Will shots be fired? Perhaps a few. However, faith in the discipline of the professional soldier, intertwined with the soft power of a generalized rejection of violence, will likely lead to many standoffs as those with treason on their lips and in their hearts pay the price for following a deceiver and consummate liar into the furnace of self-destruction.
Soft secession dulls the Executive Orders of the mad king, with de facto rejections of intimidation. It establishes alliances among like-minded individuals and state governments that will slow and even halt the spread of totalitarianism. The tools will be barriers to federal mandates, unenforceable Executive Orders, and the rejection of the invocation of the Insurrection Act. And ultimately, by 2026, the midterm elections will be held. The American people will vote the Congressional Quislings out and begin to hold them, along with the Naked King, accountable for their actions, as well as their fellow travelers and enforcers.
Events could, of course, overtake the scenario drawn, but Winston Churchill was inspiring when he exhorted his people never to surrender:
we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Surrendering to evil is to abandon life and enter the realm of condemnation, collaborators, and ultimate instruments of the very destruction that the framers made a great effort to prevent in an aspirational but ultimately noble document that has withstood the test of trial and tribulation and will prove more potent than the charms of a liar, a thief, and a snake oil salesman.
https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2025/09/time-for-soft-secession-by-blue-states/72581/
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/