Just think what America would look like without its mostly Southern states. (We could retain “America”: they could call themselves “Smith & Wesson” or “Coca-Cola” or something like that.) Universal health care. No guns. Strong unions. A humane minimum wage. A humane immigration policy. High revenues from a fair tax structure. A massive public-works program. Legal gay marriage. A ban on carbon emissions. Electric cars. Stronger workplace protections. Extended family leave from work in case of pregnancy or illness. Longer unemployment benefits. In short, a society on a par with most of the rest of the industrialized world—a place whose politics have finally caught up with its social and economic realities.

But I don’t want to appear blindly partisan—a sundering of the union would make the other half of America equally fulfilled. The red-state republic could finally establish a theocracy in which the fundamentalist Christian church would legislate all the important aspects of civic life. It could either send its illegal and/or legal immigrants northward or reinstitute a reformed system of indenture whereby immigrants are purchased by bona fide citizens who have a fully modernized respect for private property. It could, taking the lead from the pioneering Kansas legislature, abolish the income tax, raising revenue from, for example, a “pay to work” program. It could ban abortion in all instances, including rape and incest, and use the growing population of orphans to establish an impressive standing army.