What's stopping the United States from splitting...

[Chickontheright]

Excellent question. I think people would be much happier. What would it take to start a movement to be able to do this? It used to be illegal for gay's to marry and it isn't now in several states. Many things used to be illegal and were changed by voting and new laws enacted. Why can't we split this country in half.

[SirRobin]

any charts or data to back up your "red state rich man, blue state poor man" claim?

Now now... Do we really need to get reality involved? Its so much funnier to see the look on their faces when the real world stops by.

[Northern Goblin]

Not sure why people go "Yeah we'll let Texas split off" as if it's the heartland of the confederacy these days.

It's a couple of decades from being a swing state.

[smelltheglove]

i just figured it out... we split, and create a puppet govt in the 2nd usa. then when we do stupid shit we always have someone to agree with us

[Grummgug]

Obama has been elected with no mandate to govern, which has happened many times in our history, but he did do it in an odd way. When Bush won in 2000 with no mandate, he was competitive with the latino vote, and Gore was competitive with the white vote. This split is very different. Romney won whites by nearly 2/3rds. Obama won latinos by a wide margin. I don't think the country will split, but there certainly a divide.

This is a different America than a dozen years ago. Its more polarized than ever. I wonder where the white vote and latino vote will be at the 2014 midterms, after another 2 years of this.

[conscript]

The narrative of a divided America is a MYTH. The election was no more divided this time than it was in most cases.
2012 election- Difference of about 3 million in the pop vote
2008 election- landslide
2004 election- Difference of about 3 million in the pop vote
2000 election- Difference of a couple thousand in the pop vote with the loser of the election actually getting more votes
1996 election- Would have been within a few million had a third party candidate not split Republican votes
1992 election- Would have been within a few million had a third party candidate not split Republican votes.

The narrative of America being ultra divided didn't exist in 1992-2004 when the elections were just as close as they were this time. A divided America is a media driven nonsense story meant to make money, nothing else. The rhetoric may be louder but it is only because everyone now has a microphone. There will be no divided America across racial lines because there are tons of the majority race on the Democrat side. This isn't a situation where only minorities support X and only whites support Y. I'm all for splitting the South off from the US. That wouldn't bother me at all. Every single one of those garbage states takes in more money by an enormous margin than they return to the Fed. Texas can suck it too. I don't care if your GDP is enormous, you took stimulus money to cover your state deficit because you have a tax and spending problem whether you want to admit it or not (or blame it on Hispanics which is what they usually do).

[ringpriest]

1. Constitutional law prevents this.
Please, don't flame and post constructively, thank you.

If 2/3rds of the States decide they want to secede, then they can call a Constitutional Convention, pass a new Amendment, and bam, succession is now legal.

[Footsz]

Honestly, I've wondered it myself. America is not much smaller than Europe, in terms of land mass (and I think the populations were pretty close as well, but I don't remember). Consider that Europe is made up of 50 countries (according to Wikipedia), and there are 50 states in the Unites States. With the way this country has gone, I wouldn't hate it, but it is also not realistic.

Who would be responsible for the debt? Would there be a new currency? Would there be a change in government for either country? The United States is simply too large, developed, and important to the world to do this. No, I'm not saying the United States is the best or anything (I'm an American), I'm just saying that the influence of things like the American economy and our political leaders is greater than that of a third-world country.

A split of this country would potentially cause mass panic with the global economy. Imagine if the U.S. lost half of its population and tax revenue, but kept the debt? It would be an insurmountable interest total ALONE, and the American economy would ruin what was left of the nation.

A fun thing, though, would be to split the liberals and conservatives (With independents choosing their sides), split the debt, letting each have a new election to choose a new President, then see whose economy is in a better place in 20 years.

Lets measure more than that. I'd say quality of healthcare and life too would be interesting measurements.

[Jero]

Here is the divorce agreement.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/com...rce_agreement/

Here is a possible map that some liberals put together after Bush won reelection in 2004. I'd do away with the Jesusland name. Also, Canada might not be too happy about this. Liberals can take it up with them, but they might be on there own. I think we might be able to give them a little strip to connect east to west if Canada refuses, conservatives are kind of generous like that haha.

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/u...012/11/usa.jpg

[menion]

if we had another civil war, iran, if they had any brains, would finish us off as soon as we were at our weakest

[obdigore]

if we had another civil war, iran, if they had any brains, would finish us off as soon as we were at our weakest

How do you think Iran is going to move any of their soldiers out of Iran without being invaded by their neighboring nations?

[Northern Goblin]

Also, Canada might not be too happy about this. Liberals can take it up with them, but they might be on there own. I think we might be able to give them a little strip to connect east to west if Canada refuses, conservatives are kind of generous like that haha.

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/u...012/11/usa.jpg

Yeah, good luck with that last bit. Unless you're rejoining the Commonwealth in which case I'm all for it.

[artemishunter1]

How do you think Iran is going to move any of their soldiers out of Iran without being invaded by their neighboring nations?

Point is whoever wins, will be too weak to oppose any nation. It will be a pyric victory.

[mahananaka]

I think the differences between the parties is really not that significant. The mass media tv news stations really loves to hype the "war" of ideology but for the most part both sides tend to work together. I think as a nation we strongly feel that the majority has the right to rule for the time they are in office. Both parties sway and change as time goes by. Right now I think the right is having trouble connecting with the center of the country and it will continue imo to get a bit more apparent before they start making changes. But as unrepresented as they may feel and as frustrated with the elected people, the left felt the same way when Dubya was in office.

The short version is we the people of the USA all have the same idea of what our perfect country is, we just feel that the method of achieving that goal is different. Sometimes the way each side would pave that road is vastly different yes but we have too much invested in it already to let it get between us. My ideas on this doesn't even take into consideration that families are located all over the country as well. We fought brother and sister once back in the 19th century and I don't think we can stomach much of that.

Any vitriol of "we need to secede from the union" is just posturing from morons, everyone in this country benefits far to much to risk leaving the union without something monumentally massive to occur.

[gnomergon]

IDEA:

All states split and the United States becomes more akin to the European Union. States function more as distinct countries, with their own internal governments that can function as their own citizens see fit. Still a shared currency between the states, as well as free migration across state lines.

Other optional amenities that the smaller federal government could provide would be an army, welfare, social security, medicare, healthcare, etc. By optional, I mean that citizens of states would vote on whether or not they would contribute to the pot for each individual amenity, and the states that contributed would receive the benefits. Contributions would be payed for by taxes on citizens within the states.

The main issue that I see with this would be a similar situation to what the EU has with Greece, that one state could screw with the value of the currency.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

[Northern Goblin]

The difficulty there is, how does the military mobilise?

You're a collection of nations under one larger series of flags, the EU is a trade partnership of sovereign states each with their own domestic rule. Yes they combine and put towards an EU Military, but they retain their own national armed forces.

[gnomergon]

The difficulty there is, how does the military mobilise?

You're a collection of nations under one larger series of flags, the EU is a trade partnership of sovereign states each with their own domestic rule. Yes they combine and put towards an EU Military, but they retain their own national armed forces.

Each state could also maintain its own military, as it sees fit. same with their own welfare, healthcare, etc.

[obdigore]

Point is whoever wins, will be too weak to oppose any nation. It will be a pyric victory.

Ironically all these 'evil' nations that want to 'fight freedom' or whatever people think will be unable to mount any kind of assault upon the US. Those two big oceans are sort of there and most of these countries have no way of moving any kind of large forces. The only one with the manpower to do anything in the States is China, and they can't move anything like a majority of their army out of their territory or they will face riots of their own. Add to the fact that they have no way of moving troops across the Pacific...

Our current military might is retarded-strong. Even if we deplete 75% of that, we can still still fight off any nation in the world. The only fear we have is from the EU working as a group, and good luck with that one.

---------- Post added 2012-11-10 at 12:51 AM ----------

Each state could also maintain its own military, as it sees fit. same with their own welfare, healthcare, etc.

You want overarching federal government that establishes common trade and laws. It is what the EU is working towards for a reason.

[artemishunter1]

Each state could also maintain its own military, as it sees fit. same with their own welfare, healthcare, etc.

With our fragmentation will create interstate war.

---------- Post added 2012-11-10 at 12:55 AM ----------

Ironically all these 'evil' nations that want to 'fight freedom' or whatever people think will be unable to mount any kind of assault upon the US. Those two big oceans are sort of there and most of these countries have no way of moving any kind of large forces. The only one with the manpower to do anything in the States is China, and they can't move anything like a majority of their army out of their territory or they will face riots of their own. Add to the fact that they have no way of moving troops across the Pacific...

Our current military might is retarded-strong. Even if we deplete 75% of that, we can still still fight off any nation in the world. The only fear we have is from the EU working as a group, and good luck with that one.

---------- Post added 2012-11-10 at 12:51 AM ----------



You want overarching federal government that establishes common trade and laws. It is what the EU is working towards for a reason.

You don't know the definition of Pyric victory. We will do so much damage to each other that, whoever wins will have massive debt, destruction of infrastructure in massive scale, death tolls in million, and the famine and disease that is going to follow the war, that even a Latin American Nation would be able to topple them.

[Apellosine]

Interesting.

I would have figured Texas in general would be very, very Red from all corners. Shattered that stereotype.

And as recently as 1976 Texas voted Democrat in the Presidential election while California voted Republican. States may seem completely one way but can change with the times.