A former aide to President Ronald Reagan is calling for southern states to secede from the union and form a new conservative nation called “Reagan” where citizens wouldn’t be forced to compromise on “traditional values” like marriage.

Right Wing Watch on Wednesday flagged conservative author Douglas MacKinnon’s interview with evangelical radio host Janet Mefferd, in which he hocked his new book, “The Secessionist States of America: The Blueprint for Creating a Traditional Values Country … Now.” Cautioning that all his secession talk was purely “academic,” MacKinnon suggested that South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida break away from the United States and form a new republic named “Reagan.”

“You have to remember that all 11 states from the South, including ultimately Texas, seceded legally,” MacKinnon told Mefferd. “They left the union peacefully, they left the union legally, and then President Lincoln … part of the problem there was that the North realized very quickly that it could not survive economically without the power of the South.”

After making the legal case for secession — and branding the Civil War “illegal” to boot — MacKinnon argued that the leaders Americans are electing today do not represent traditional values, particularly when it comes to marriage.

“If you happen to make a donation in favor of traditional marriage, you can lose your job,” he told Mefferd. “If you happen to refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple because it goes against your religious beliefs, you can be driven out of business. If you’re a football commentator and you happen to just say, innocently, that you know maybe I wouldn’t have drafted a gay football player because I wouldn’t want to deal with the distraction, many people on the left will try to drive you out of your job as well.”

“The world has been turned upside down if you do happen to believe in traditional values,” MacKinnon added. “I think there’s a core group in the United States of America that’s anywhere from 30 to 50 to 80 million Americans that strongly believe in traditional values. Unfortunately, as we know too, much of the mainstream media has been hijacked by the left and so it’s very difficult to get our message out.”

Interestingly, MacKinnon left the state with the strongest history of secessionist sentiment out of his thought experiment.

“I’m a huge fan of Texas … but you know, if in fact, you tried to do something like that, then would the government of Mexico look at Texas in sort of a more hostile manner than it already does now,” he explained. “There have certainly been a number of incursions into Texas and other places from some of the folks in Mexico.”

Listen to MacKinnon’s comments on secession and on gay marriage below via Right Wing Watch:

h/t Salon

This post has been updated.