We Can Have Unity or We Can Have Freedom. We Can’t Have Both.

The idea of political unity has long been a popular trope and slogan in politics. “He’s a uniter, not a divider” is a sentiment that many American politicians like to cultivate about themselves. Over many centuries and across many jurisdictions we encounter the claim that unity is a political virtue, and that anything that “divides us” must therefore be condemned. Some even label opposition to unity as a type of treason.

So, it makes sense that political unity is often the language employed by those who seek to enhance and increase the power of the state. Since the advent of nationalism in the late eighteenth century, “unity” has been a common rallying cry in attempts to hammer together strong national states over the objections of local powers and minority populations. Those who weren’t on the winning end of “unification” could see that political unity would actually obliterate the independence and self-determination of those in the minority. Put another way, unity has long been the slogan and goal of those who are in the business of state building.

Consider, for example, the nationalists of nineteenth-century Italy and Germany. Or the French revolutionaries. The Soviet political system was highly unified within the party and within the state itself. All of these revolutionary regimes proclaimed political unity to be one of their chief goals. The United States has certainly been no different. Thanks to the Civil War in the 1860s, the rise of the administrative state in the 1930s, and the triumph of the national security state since 1945, the United States has become progressively more unified under an increasingly powerful central state.

In all of these cases, political unity has triumphed over regionalism, secession, and local self-governance. Moreover, the reality of political unity in practice illustrates that it is a tool used to extinguish freedom and the crucial political decentralization that has historically been the foundation of human liberty in the Western tradition.

While unity sounds like a nice thing to have, when it comes to politics and nation-states, experience repeatedly shows that we can have unity or we can have freedom. We can’t have both.

Unity is a great thing in the private sector and in private life. With non-state institutions unity is voluntary and not imposed by politicians wielding coercive power. Families and religious groups are wonderful when the people within them enjoy unity. However, no one is forced to “unite” within a family or a parish at the point of a gun. Those who wish to leave the group may do so, and those who remain continue to be unified.

States do not function this way, and as they become larger and more diverse, the more they tend to rely on coercion. Polities with people of relatively uniform cultures and economic interests living within a limited space can embrace unity with relatively small levels of force. As Carlo Lottieri puts it:

In a tiny community it is easier for people to share the same claims. In other words, a small political community is more homogenous, and less heterogeneity drives us to a society where only a few people are forced to submit to a “common opinion” that conflicts with their wills.

The use of force is expensive, however, so states often attempt to offset the need for coercive measures through the use of propaganda. This “solution” has proven to be far from perfect, so it inevitably fails and states ultimately must resort to the usual means of violence to impose “unity.” Consequently, any group that wishes to secede from the “unified” whole faces violent opposition from the state. Minority populations will soon find themselves at the mercy of the majority-backed elites who wield a monopoly over the means of coercion.

The Twentieth-Century Illusion of American Unity

Many Americans get nostalgic for the alleged good old days when it is believed that “America was unified.” It’s somewhat unclear to which historical period they are referring. Obviously, the US was not unified in the nineteenth century in terms of culture, religion, politics, or even language. The United States was held together as a fairly loose confederation of self-governing states that endured huge influxes of immigrants from Germany, England, and Ireland. Later came waves of Italians and Eastern Europeans. Catholics were hated by old guard of WASPS. Irish were considered to be somewhere between Anglo-Saxons and apes.  The fight over prohibition is just one example of the utter lack of cultural uniformity in the United States before the Second World War.

So, when we hear of the golden age of political unity, one must conclude the nostalgists are referring to the mid-twentieth century when the so-called “liberal consensus” prevailed. This was a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans subscribed to a narrow ideology that favored New Deal welfare programs, Keynesian economics, and anti-Soviet foreign policy. There were some mild variations in this view, which manifested themselves in partisan competition between the two major respectable political parties. This “unity” was in large part maintained by government-approved messaging relentlessly reinforced by public schools and mass media. The range of allowable opinion was defined by what one saw on the three major television networks (and corresponding radio affiliates) which monopolized virtually all media content.

Many Americans consequently believed themselves to be “free,” although their views of culture, religion, and politics nearly always fell within the ideological window dictated by cradle-to-grave messaging control. Those who departed from the acceptable views were generally locked out of positions of influence by universities, book publishers, television stations, and others. Many didn’t know that other opinions were even possible for reasonable people. Minority groups—whether ideological, racial, or religious—were generally ignored by media and were largely invisible.

Although some civil unrest and resistance broke out every now and then, the economic growth of the “thirty glorious years” helped—combined with the sustained media propaganda—to give the impression that the tenuous political unity of the time was voluntary. Events like Eisenhower’s use of the National Guard against Arkansas in 1957 is so notable because that sort of thing was generally unnecessary in that period.

But those days are over. The liberal consensus broke down in the late 1970s as new economic realities exposed the truth about the state’s Keynesian economic system. The end of the Cold War further removed one of the most important foundations of American state power: using a foreign threat to train the populace to be forever fearful and accept whatever the state wanted to dish out in the name of defeating communism.

Over the past 25 years—fueled by failed wars, the growing surveillance state, and the inflationist corporate bailouts—ideological division and crisis has only grown. This was further sped up by the Covid Panic which, in the eyes of millions, obliterated the legitimacy of medical, governmental, and educational institutions. Since covid, virtually everything has come to be (correctly) seen as ideological and in the service of exercising political power over enemies.

The Red State-Blue State Divide: “Unity” Will Need to Be Imposed by Force 

With the breakdown of the old “consensus,” combined with a weakening economy—and a growing realization that the federal government does not actually represent anyone but wealthy donors and the permanent government—we can expect more and more resistance to federal edicts on everything from medical policy to drugs and to immigration and abortion. Just as a policies of state-level nullification has worked to weaken federal laws against marijuana, we will continue to see more efforts to use state and local laws as a means of countering federal actions and delegitimizing federal enforcement. (Historically, this method was also successfully used to weaken federal fugitive slave laws.)

Those who favor political unity will then insist on employing ever greater levels of federal power to force unity and compliance.

We see this dynamic at work right now in the conflict over immigration. Pro-immigrant forces, now no longer in power in Washington, are attempting to use state and local policies—as well as the mobilization of activists—to oppose action in Washington. Not surprisingly, with a Republican in the White House, the fiercest opposition to federal action has come in so-called “blue states” where local populations and officials are most resistant.

As a result, the advocates of federal anti-immigration policies have been demanding more federal power to further expand the police powers of federal agencies. As the opponents of unity push back against the central state, the response from above is to further increase federal power so as to force unity where it cannot be gained through more subtle means.

This situation changes depending on which political party is in control of federal regulatory and police powers. —States and cities—and ideological minorities that exercise more power regionally than nationally—will look to the use of non-federal power as a means of insulating locals from federal power. This has been seen on issues such as abortion, immigration, drugs, guns, and healthcare. Or, some will resort to popular resistance as with anti-covid lockdown protestors and anti-vaccine activists.

In each case, whichever political coalition is in power in Washington will demand unity and compliance with federal policy. For example, when Barack Obama was in power, it was the state governments and activist groups who attempted to use state law to counter the administration’s immigrant policies. Just as the Trump supporters presently demand federally imposed political unity, the Obama administration at the time similarly declared “states are trying to supplant the federal government’s role in setting immigration policy, and we can’t have fifty different immigration policies.”

Thus we hear echoed yet again the perennial slogan of those who favor centralized power and political unity imposed from above: the central government must have the last say and be able to dictate uniform policy to every corner of the regime’s territory.  Right now, under Trump, this sounds pretty good to anti-immigration activists. But after inauguration day on 2029, it will most likely sound much less good as federal agents move to “unify” the country yet again by enforcing federal edicts on everything from guns to vaccines to health care and more.

This cycle will continue to spiral toward greater despotism so long as the United States endures as the increasingly unitary state that it has become. Each new administration will prompt out-of-power groups to resist federal power, and this will be followed by ratcheting up federal power to ensure that “America” remains “united.” The result will be exactly what we have witnessed over the past century: an ever larger federal government in which the pursuit of “unity” justifies an ever tighter federal grip on the nation. There will be no escape from this until Americans finally abandon their romantic and naive view of unity and begin to demand disunity, division, secession, and the dissolution of the American state.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

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