Could the Red States Secede?

I had a talk earlier today with an old friend who brought up the idea of letting the deep red states secede from the union.

My response was that this would have been quite practical in 1860 when the South wanted to leave, but that it won’t work today. In fact, in retrospect, I think many Americans believe that Lincoln should have simply accepted the idea and let nature take its course, i.e., allow the south to become a pariah nation that would have gone steadily into decline intellectually, technologically, diplomatically and economically, while remaining at the bottom morally.  After a decade or so, the whole confederacy could have been taken over by Aruba or the City of Juarez.

But 160 years later, this is not a possibility.  Yes, the plight of the new nation, which might have been named the True Patriots, would be similar to the confederacy in terms of its certain descent into the deepest levels of poverty and global irrelevance, due to these people’s gross ignorance and indifference to truth.  But even outside of humanitarian issues, the idea of secession is rife with problems.

Military takeovers no longer require months of weighty logistics, e.g., putting soldiers and their munitions on ships or horseback.  The remaining United States would need to defend the True Patriots, or we’d wind up with Russian missiles in Indianapolis or Topeka.

The red states are not contiguous.  A cross-country drive would take one back and forth between the two nations.

Having anti-science people (e.g., anti-vaxxers) as neighbors would have intense complications and dangers.  Think of what it would be like to have a nation, geographically intertwined with our own, in which almost all of its residents refused vaccinations.  We’d need bans on entry or lengthy quarantines during times of pandemic.

Many Americans wish we could jettison these people, but that would require turning back the hands of time, which, regrettably, is impossible.