America is not the creature it once was, Mencius Moldbug reminds us:
The 19th-century American was an incredibly politicized, democratically engaged, and — not least — macho and violent creature. It is not surprising that in 1861, when a bunch of states tried to secede, the rest broke out in a paroxysm of enthusiasm for a war to save the Union. (It was certainly not a war to free the slaves — not in 1861, anyway.) If you were teleported into that mania, you would speak the language, but you would feel no other cultural connection to the people. You’d feel more or less as if you’d been sent to an insane asylum.In 2009, or at any later date, what will happen if a state government tries to secede? So long as it has strong internal public support and the support of the state security forces, it will — secede. Nothing at all will happen. The state will simply become an independent country. Washington simply does not have anything like the political energy to coerce a seceding state. It barely has the political energy to coerce a seceding city. Americans simply are not going to shoot at other Americans for this reason. If this assertion is true, as I believe it is, state police with shotguns can easily thwart the entire US military in a secession situation. The latter simply won’t attack. They will not be ordered to. The hate just isn’t there.
The idea that any national force could prevent a state from seceding strikes me as rather like the idea that the US will guarantee Israel against Iran’s nuclear weapons, by promising nuclear retaliation against Iran if Iran nukes Tel Aviv. Frankly, I don’t think the America of today — the America that prohibits its own soldiers from shooting back at the Taliban, if the Taliban are shooting from a house — has the stones to nuke Russia if Russia nukes America (not that it will). The proposition that Washington could or would incinerate millions of Iranians, whatever the Iranian government did to Israel, is ridiculous. It is simply reverse presentism — anachronistic translation of past assumptions to the present. Washington once had an ideology that allowed it to nuke cities for reasons of state, but not now.
Similarly, Washington once had an ideology that allowed it to coerce states, or combinations of states, or even cities, that wanted to be independent. But not now. I would not say the thing is trivial, but any state, or even major coastal city, can almost certainly succeed if it plays its cards right.
I do have to wonder how the federal government would react to a state seceding, because it’s hard to remain apathetic with that much tax revenue on the table.