National Divorce: A Plan for Peace with Jason Fry

Daniel Miller sits down with Jason Fry, a TNM supporter many readers already know without realizing it. For five years Fry wrote for The Texian Partisan under the pen name Noah Smithwick, keeping his Texas independence work quiet because of his day job. He is also a competitive bladesmith who has appeared on Forged in Fire and who hand-forged the Alamo-style swords given to donors at the TNM’s Line in the Sand Society gala. With the release of his new book, National Divorce: A Plan for Peace, Fry steps out from behind the pen name.

Fry traces the book to the Shelby Park standoff at Eagle Pass, when Texas locked the gates and Texans and federal agents ended up lined up across from one another. With two sons in the military, he saw how easily a moment like that could go sideways even when no one means for it to, and he decided the case for a peaceful path needed to be made out loud and made early. His thesis is the one the TNM has argued for years. The way to avoid that confrontation is to never line up in the first place, and that means settling the question with a vote.

Miller and Fry get into the heart of the book. National divorce, Fry argues, has been a catchy slogan with no plan behind it, so he set out to supply the plan, drawing on the same legislative, political, cultural, and economic process behind TEXIT, CalExit, the New Hampshire movement, and the referendum scholarship of Dr. Matt Qvortrup. They talk through why the split is inevitable while the chaos is optional, the idea that there was never a real national marriage to save because no one ever consented to it, and why a union of people who disagree this deeply does not have to be governed by a single set of rules. Fry credits his own background, an autonomous church tradition and a day job in behavioral psychology spent keeping people from hurting each other, for his conviction that you get ahead of conflict rather than clean it up afterward.

In this episode

• Jason Fry revealing himself as longtime Texian Partisan writer Noah Smithwick, and the swords he forged for the Line in the Sand Society
• The Shelby Park standoff at Eagle Pass and how close it came to going wrong
• Why national divorce has been a slogan without a plan, and what Fry’s plan actually is
• The argument that separation is inevitable but the chaos is up to us
• The case that there was never a national marriage to save, and the consent of the governed
• Tribal sorting, aggression versus live and let live, and the tired claim that a state is too small to govern itself
• Where to find National Divorce: A Plan for Peace

Guest links

• Jason Fry’s book: National-Divorce.com
• Jason Fry on X: @jasonkfry
• Fry Custom Knives on YouTube: @frycustomknives8429