A REALLY Radical idea – Breaking up the Union
I’ll just put this out here. It may be time for the union to split. It may be time for secession of states/regions from the union.
These fifty, majorly diverse, geographically wide-spread states clearly no longer function well under a single banner. So maybe it is time to give serious thought to splitting the union, and starting fresh.
Yes, I am suggesting that the United States of American split up.
The central government and its bureaucracy are failing us further and further. No effective, useful changes are happening. Health care reform is of no real use to anyone but the insurance companies; the war on drugs wastes unbelievable money; Wall Street is no better regulated; modern day robber-barons loot and pillage at will, having bought our ‘representatives’ every election cycle. No one cares that their PROFITS are in the billions of dollars – somehow they, and the wealthy, need tax breaks.
National elections, like the current Presidential debacle, show the amazing and, frankly, scary depths of the divide across this country. That, and the incredibly backwards laws being debated out there that deny hard-won rights to women. It is hard to believe this is the 21st century, between the attitudes of the potential candidates and these frighteningly backwards initiatives happening far too frequently.
We have always lacked a single, defined way of being. You can identity people of other nationalities far more easily…like the French, Germans, Koreans, English (and I acknowledge this does involve stereotyping)…but American – not so much. People from the deep south are nothing like people from the northeast who are tremendously different from the people of the west coast who have very different attitudes from the Midwesterners. And those are very broad generalizations.
Let’s face it. Apart from the Slavery issue, the Confederacy might not have been such a bad idea. I know you might want to throw stones at me, but let’s be serious here. How vastly different are the attitudes of Northerners from Southerners? How much do the people of the South identify themselves as separate and apart not only from the North, but the rest of the union? If it hadn’t been about slaves, but simply about wickedly different philosophies – would the Confederacy have been such a bad idea?
We are, geographically, immense. Not counting Hawaii or Alaska, the continental forty-eight cover an amazing amount of space. Population wise, we are the third largest country on Earth (just over 310 MILLION people), while area wise we are the fourth largest (almost 3.7 MILLION square miles). How does one government successfully govern such an enormous population over such a broad space? Frankly – it doesn’t.
This is why I am suggesting this drastic idea. This is why I am beginning to believe that the only solution to our national crisis is secession.
Ideally, how might this work?
I covered this in a fiction I wrote once, but that doesn’t lessen its possibility. I can see certain states banding together to form new regional entities. They could form new nations with common interests over a FAR smaller distance, and with much more similar interests and ideals.
For example – the Northeast. If Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey formed an independent nation, I think the greater co-prosperity sphere they would form could be hugely beneficial on a lot of different levels.
And certainly, a nation of that size would be far more manageable. And as different as these states are from one another, they still have enough similarities in attitude and approach that such a merger is not beyond plausibility.
Now I am not advocating that we split up the union, form new nation-states, and then close and arm the borders. No. I am suggesting that we bypass the existing central government and its overwhelming bureaucracy and try something more easily manageable. I am suggesting we break away from the existing union, and start anew,
Is this a perfect idea? Of course not. It is fraught with tons of uncertainty, not to mention reliance on human decency to create something LESS corrupt than what already exists…plus it could make for some ugly divides that people would really rather not be a part of. But no idea will be perfect. That doesn’t mean this idea is BAD…but it’s an idea.
What ideas have our politicians got to fix the country? Business leaders? Community leaders? Religious leaders?
How about you?
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