A conservative columnist and former aide to President Ronald Reagan called on southern states to secede and form an ultraconservative new nation named after his old boss.

Douglas MacKinnon, a former speechwriter for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, appeared Tuesday on The Janet Mefford Show to promote his new book, “The Secessionist States of America: The Blueprint for Creating a Traditional Values Country … Now,” reported Right Wing Watch.

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He told the religious conservative host that southern states – starting with Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina – should leave the United States so they can implement a right-wing Christian system of government.

MacKinnon envisions other states joining, but he hopes to leave out Texas because “there have been a number of incursions into Texas and other places from some of the folks in Mexico.”

“A growing number of our leaders seem determined to erase our borders,” he wrote in a recent syndicated column promoting his book, “do away with the rule-of-law, expand the nanny state into a theology, bankrupt or punish American companies in the name of fighting climate change, do away with the 2nd Amendment, censor or demonize the history of western civilization and replace it with multiculturalism, give every kid a trophy and turn them into wimps, continue to support the completely unfunded public-employee pensions which are destroying the financial solvency of cities, counties, and states across our nation, add billions every day to our $17 trillion in debt, destroy our health-care system to substitute socialized medicine, vilify fossil fuels, and attack all faith in God with a particular and unhinged bias against the Christian faith.”

He argued on the radio program that the South had “seceded legally” and “peacefully” in the months prior to the Civil War.

“President Lincoln waged an illegal war that was, in fact, not declared against the South after the South basically did what we’re talking about in this book now in terms of peacefully, legally and constitutionally leaving the union,” MacKinnon said.

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However, MacKinnon brushed aside Mefford’s concerns that secession would trigger another Civil War, saying only that “it wouldn’t remotely come to that” because news coverage is faster and more thorough in modern times.

He said the new country should be called Reagan, at least until voters there could decide on a permanent name.

MacKinnon did not specifically address during the radio program whether slavery would be legal in the new secessionist government, nor did he describe the status of black people living in Reagan.

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But he made clear that LGBT people would be second-class citizens – or worse – saying that advances in their rights as citizens was a major factor in his call to break up the United States.

“If you do believe in traditional values, if you are a Christian, if you are evangelical, if you do believe in the golden rule, then you’re seeing all of this unravel before our eyes daily,” he complained.

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MacKinnon said he devised his plan with the help of a military veteran friend, along with a group that included “a constitutional law expert, two former military officers, two former diplomats, a minister, another special operator, and experts on banking, energy, farming, and infrastructure.”

“I simply want those who believe the downward spiral of our country is irreversible, to know that an option to preserve their values does exist,” MacKinnon wrote in a column. “That some folks with a great deal of real-world experience felt it was their responsibility to at least explore the possibility of secession.”

Listen to MacKinnon discuss his plan in this audio excerpt posted online by Right Wing Watch: