Form a new country? Speaking as amateur cartographer, I support all independence movements, because it will give cartographers new borders to draw on maps and thus a reason for people to buy new maps.
Declare the East Coast US States independent and be done with it; I am tired of waiting.
Oh, it is entirely unrelated to this particular issue. But the population of America could benefit from more local democracy rather than something far away as Washington, D.C..
Now one may argue that that is already defined in the Constitution and that even if it wasn't, more local politics could be enforced by law by reducing the reach of the federal government. But I doubt either of us are that naïve.
The USA have proved that democracy does not scale well. And that is why it has moved to centralise power ever since the Constitution was signed.
It may not be a victory for privacy, but it would be a victory for democracy.
One of the few plausible ways out of the mess we find ourselves in right now is a strong movement towards states rights. Nominally, the states have a lot more power in our system then they are currently exercising, so it doesn't require any new law, just some assertions of what already exists (albeit in the form of Constitutional Conventions rather than simply asserting laws, which would be simpler). It's not my perfect ideological solution by any means, but it's one of the few practical ones, inasmuch as it does involve walking up to a group of people and asking them to go grab more power as competing interests, rather than asking people with power to unilaterally disarm, which is pretty much a "fat chance" option.
Secession is in some sense the ultimate State's right extreme, but I wouldn't advocate it until more normal avenues were tried and failed. It has... proved hazardous, to say the least.
I realise of course you refer to the American Civil War. But there are some striking differences between then and now.
I imagine it would be like this; a state (or more) announce that they will hold a referendum on independence, months (or even years) before the actual referendum will take place (similar to how it will take place in Scotland). This will give the President and the Federal Government time to react without having to sort to arms right away.
Furthermore, a referendum is particularly what will set it apart from the American Civil War; this will be the will of the people (of that state, obviously) and not merely the will of the state (which was the case during the American Civil War, it was merely the legislatures that decided to secede, and not by referendum).
This will make it much harder to justify for the federal government to intervene with military. Seeing as the process will open and peaceful, it would be seen as a considerable overreaction by the federal government to strike down with force on a seceding state.
In addition because war has gotten so much more terrible, and I doubt you'd even convince the army of doing so.
In short; I do not believe that you should be afraid of a military response to an independence, as long as you play fair. That's just intimidation. It would be sad to see that the only thing keeping the American states united was fear.
However, I do agree with you that independence should be the last resort. But considering the last few decades, it seems many things have already been tried.
