America's slumbering secession obsession

Barack Obama has shown America that crony corporatism, patronage politics, and limitless government know no party. Some of us, on balance, are okay with that fact. Others are not—but many of the anxious and jaded would sooner just fade out of civic life than step up to the challenge of secession, with the higher-stakes effort of state and local governance that awaits.

Because the federal government has become so ubiquitous and voracious, there seems to be no negotiating with its size and scope. The struggles over taxes, budgets, surveillance, incarceration, and related matters have soured Americans on the prospects of methodical, measured reform. Increasingly, the radical alternatives of giving up on politics or giving up on the United States seem like the only alternatives.

And the more disconnected we become from the era of the Civil War, the more abstract and plausible the idea of secession becomes. Not only is secession becoming delinked from the memory of the Confederate States; it’s even coming unglued from the national conservative coalition that controlled much of federal politics in the last years of the 20th century. According to Reuters, current Democrat support for secession is hovering around 20 percent.