In the case of interposition, we took care to have a sound legal basis for disapplication of The Blessing. But secession was a completely different matter. We were indifferent as to whether our purported secession from the Union was or was not valid. This is because none of the governors actually wanted their states to leave the Union. Secession was a purely tactical move designed to again raise the stakes for Jordan and the Congress and provide them with a powerful incentive to come to some sort of settlement or accommodation with that part of the country that was resisting the theocratic project. We calculated that the seceding states might account for up to 43 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. By withdrawing, the members of the Sec Bloc would deprive the federal government of 47 percent of its tax revenues. New York alone accounted for nearly 10 percent of the federal government’s revenue base. Put simply, without the more liberal coastal states and other large economies like Illinois, the federal government would not be viable.
During the last month of 2017, arrests and civil violence unfolded around the country largely as predicted by Sanjay. Following arrests on sedition charges of state leaders in New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Mexico, new conservative Republican governors took office. National Guard troops and Christian militia shut down the smaller state capitals, including Olympia, Washington; Salem, Oregon; and Lansing, Michigan, preventing the legislatures there from convening. At the end, secession legislation became law in fourteen states: New York, Massachusetts, California, Maine, Connecticut, Vermont, Maryland, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Illinois, Delaware, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.
The governor had asked me to draft some sort of declaration or joint statement that could be made by the seceding states. At the outset of the Civil War, the southern states took similar approaches to secession. Each adopted an Ordinance of Secession, typically providing that the acts taken to join the Union were repealed and that the union of their state with the other states accordingly was dissolved. But a number of southern states also issued a Declaration of Causes, and these I studied carefully. One night in early December, I sat down at my desk in the governor’s midtown office to start drafting our version of a Declaration of Causes, which would take the form of a statement by the governor on behalf of the seceding states.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard for many minutes. I stared out the window up Third Avenue toward 42nd Street, unable to start. It was 10 p.m., and yet the traffic was as dense as that in most American cities at rush hour. Suddenly I saw myself from above, sitting at the desk, and realized that this person was about to draft a document that would rank among the most important in American history. But sitting at the desk wasn’t a Jefferson or a Lincoln, a Webster or a Clay—it was me. It must be a mistake, I thought. Sitting there was a lawyer, a technician, and an advisor to others; a person who saw both sides of every argument rather than embracing one side with passion. Surely this was not the person to write the words that would tear apart a great nation that had endured for nearly a quarter millennium.
But honestly, there was another reason altogether that I hesitated. I was scared. I knew that I was committing treason. I am a person who is uncomfortable jaywalking, who gets fidgety if exceeding the speed limit, and who is burdened with a bourgeois respect for authority. I knew that secession is unlawful and that treason is a crime rarely judged kindly by history. We will probably lose this fight, and then what, I wondered. I will be arrested, convicted in a martial law court, and what—shot? I couldn’t blame the evangelicals for this one. Treason is a capital crime almost everywhere. Tap those keys and die.
As insights go, this was one I could have done without. I called Sanjay and asked if I could come over. After a couple of Brooklyn lagers, I explained my problem.
Sanjay laughed.
“I hardly think it funny that I’ve discovered that I’m a coward.”
“You are not a coward. You are a human being. Everyone is afraid. Fear is a gift. Sometimes fear is a salutary warning to step away from the precipice. Sometimes fear is simply a call to courage and action. You must decide which, but I think you already know that.”
The next morning I went to the office and finished the statement. When the fourteenth state had passed and signed its Act of Secession, the governor called a press conference that was carried live throughout the country. He read the short statement I had drafted on behalf of the fourteen governors:
Fourteen states have today suspended their participation in our federal Union. We do so with heavy hearts but with a strong conviction that we have acted in the best interests of our great nation and its people. Even the greatest country can lose its way. A strident minority has seized the instruments of federal power intent on implementing a theocratic society completely at odds with our Constitution, our values, and our traditions. This is not merely a debate about politics or policy. The freedoms and lives of millions of Americans are at grave risk. Neither the fourteen states stepping out of the Union today, nor the thirty-six remaining states, can prosper or endure on their own. We have taken with us nearly half of the federal government’s revenues and over 40 percent of our national economy. Know this and take courage from it—deprived of these resources, President Jordan and all those who serve him cannot govern. They cannot succeed and they cannot implement their theocratic vision. Take courage and stand against them because they
can
be defeated. Our nation must and will again be whole. When the voters return to power people committed to the restoration of constitutional government, we will rejoin the Union. When the so-called Blessing is withdrawn, we will return. When martial law is lifted and our fundamental freedoms are restored, we will return. We
will
return. My fellow governors, our brave legislators and millions of our citizens join with me in making this promise: We will dedicate our lives, and make any sacrifice required, so that America will be whole, free, and great again.
If your brother, the son of your father or of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries to secretly seduce you, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” unknown to you, whether near you or far away, anywhere throughout the world, you must not consent, you must not listen to him; you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt.
No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the lands of the rest of the people following
.
—Deuteronomy 13:7–11
“Yes, march against Babylon, the land of rebels, a land that I will judge! Pursue, kill, and completely destroy them, as I have commanded you,” says the Lord. “Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction.”
—Jeremiah 50:21–22
You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
—Napoleon
T
HE START OF THE
H
OLY
W
AR
was anticlimactic. Everyone knew the inevitable consequences of secession, and the only question was how and when Jordan would react. He chose a presidential address on Christmas Day. It is worth quoting:
My fellow Americans. Today is Christmas Day, a day which America, as a Christian Nation, has solemnly celebrated for all of its national life. So to each of you and your families, I wish you a happy and joyous Christmas, filled with the light and grace of Christ. 2018 years ago last night, an angel told a simple shepherd the greatest news that has ever been communicated to a human being—that our loving Father had sent us a redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ. Today, I share with you similarly joyous news. America, God’s shining city on a hill, the consummation of all He desired and planned for His children, has itself nearly completed its own redemption as a Christian Nation. The Lord never said it would be easy. For nearly 250 years He has tested us with the challenge of establishing human dominion over a vast wilderness, and most recently the challenge of casting off a thoroughly corrupt and disobedient culture that brought down upon us the grave weight of God’s displeasure. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified for us at Calvary, taught us to shoulder the burdens of the Lord joyfully, and so I tell you today the good news that we are now prepared to shoulder—with joy and determination—the last burden set for us on the path of God’s plan for man. I hereby declare that the United States of America is at war—a Holy War for the Union—with the states that have purported to secede from our great and God-given nation. Our Union is a holy and indissoluble one, like holy matrimony, and only the hand of Satan would dare attempt to rip it asunder. So with reverence, I pray that God will accept this national sacrifice on the day of Christ’s birth. I know that you join me in committing our nation to this course. By the Lord’s birthday next year, our national redemption will be complete, our nation will be whole and finally truly free, and all Americans will live in peace until the joyous time when we ascend to eternal life by the grace of Jesus. Thank God for the Blessing of His Word and His law, God bless each of you, and God bless America.
It was an odd feeling, during that winter, to hit the gym and go through my familiar routine; to ride the subway where I often sat near the same large Jamaican woman reading
Guideposts
who always gave me a friendly smile that made me feel good about my morning; to queue up at the same coffee cart where Abdul didn’t need to be told my order; to pass through the metal detector sternly operated by the largest state trooper I had ever seen; and to enter the governor’s midtown office and sit down in front of a computer like millions of other New Yorkers, all doing what we always had done, as if nothing had changed. And then, when you least expected it during the day, you would look out the window and suddenly remember that we were at war. Something called a Holy War, no less, which somehow felt infinitely worse. But we knew it only because Jordan had said so, and a compliant Congress, with all Sec Bloc representatives and senators absent, had agreed.
But what did it mean? Was a twenty-six-year-old lieutenant sitting in the humming electronic control room of a US Navy destroyer in the Atlantic far over the horizon beyond Brooklyn preparing to dispatch a laser-guided missile so F3 could play a video over and over showing how the president had taken out the entire executive leadership of New York while impressively limiting “collateral damage”? Would we see tanks rolling up Third Avenue late some afternoon? Were snipers lounging in a rented office across the street just waiting for the governor or me to step in front of a window? What exactly did this “war” mean?
In college I read a book about Paris during the two weeks before German troops entered the city. The author interviewed a baker who, that morning in June 1940, had risen early, baked his baguettes, sold them as usual, and then meticulously cleaned his store as the first rank of Nazi troops marched past his
boulangerie
to occupy the city. “How could you do it,” the author had asked him, “when the world you knew was ending?” “How could I not?” the baker had replied. So each of us pressed on like the baker, pressed on with our daily routines, and for the time being, life in New York, and in most of the Sec Bloc, appeared normal.
What I knew, but most others did not, was that New York was woefully unprepared for any type of physical confrontation with the federal forces, which most of the Sec Bloc population now referred to simply as “the Holies.” Had Jordan chosen to launch an assault in January or February of that year, promptly following the declaration of Holy War, I believe that the result would have been swift and certain. But civil war was one contingency for which the US military had not planned. And full-blown civil war is a tricky business. A regular army knows what its resources are. But at first the Pentagon could not predict which Guard units, reservists, and other troops would respond to federal direction and which would choose to defy orders and defend their home states. Planners could not know which hardware located within the Sec Bloc would remain available to commanders and what equipment would be commandeered or sequestered by forces loyal to the Secs. And perhaps most difficult for our opponents, Jordan’s advisors needed to make some assumptions about what the troops would and would not do. It was far from clear that even the most disciplined naval aviator would follow orders in the customary way when the bomb he has been told to drop is destined for Beacon Hill or Harvard Yard, or the strafing run is to disperse a crowd from Times Square. In conventional wars, troops manage to dehumanize the enemy, a psychological defense mechanism that is vital to having good young people engage in horrific violence against a political (as opposed to personal) enemy. But this is more difficult in a civil war where the enemy may include your niece or nephew, your college roommate, or your sister’s boyfriend. It is more difficult when the place being attacked is where you went on your eighth-grade trip, your honeymoon, or your last vacation. America then was a mobile society. You grew up in Iowa, went to college in Florida, had your first job in Atlanta, and married a woman from Colorado. All this explains why regimes fighting long-standing wars against their own people rely mostly on special forces distinguished by their fanatical commitment to the cause, such as the Republican Guards in Iraq or the Revolutionary Guards in Iran. As far as we knew, Jordan didn’t yet have a reliable force of holy warriors who would follow orders to kill their fellow Americans and obliterate the coastal cities of their own country. This, we speculated, was one of the reasons why the Holy War, once declared, did not actually commence.
Sanjay’s celebrity and moral leadership of the secular opposition brought him e-mails, letters, and phone calls from sources within the Christian Nation Bloc of states, including the few remaining secularists in positions of authority in Washington. Quite soon we were able to piece together the administration’s military strategy. Evangelicals had been deeply embedded within all branches of the military for many years. They had dominated the chaplaincy since the beginning of the Iraq War, and for at least two decades born-again commanders had preferentially promoted fellow evangelicals within the ranks. The only remaining task was to create special units and squads in all the relevant commands that had been purged of any but the most fervent and fundamentalist evangelical troops and thoroughly screened for family ties to the Sec Bloc. This process took about four months. The resulting units were cohesive, with each soldier sharing a worldview that included deeply rooted disdain for the godless coastal elites, whom they believed had for decades scorned, ridiculed, and victimized true Christians. For them, this was now about payback. These special units were called Joshua Brigades.