One way to consider this is to think about the two-party system. The first-past-the-post voting system used in most US elections, including all federal elections and most state and local elections, makes a two-party system almost inevitable, and within that system, candidates should and do try to stake out the political space that is closest to the center of the electorates' preferences. This sort of system does not work, however, in the US right now: across the South, Democrats cannot occupy that center ground, because the broad platform of the national Democratic party differs so sharply from the political views of the Southern electorate, and, similarly, Republicans cannot occupy that center ground on the coasts. While at a national level the US remains a finely balanced two-party system, the high correlation of political views with geography means that, on a local level, much of the country suffers under one-party systems.
As far as I can tell, this began with Nixon's Southern strategy, which triggered the slow, steady alignment of political party with political views. On the face of it, there's nothing wrong with having parties that are more homogeneous and that have sharper, more strongly defined views. I suspect that the US population has sorted itself by political viewpoint to some extent, which, combined with the steady improvement in gerrymandering techniques, means that most candidates for office face competition only from members of their own party.
This process has caused two unfortunate results: at the national level, moderates have become scarce, because moderates don't win primary elections; and most state and local governments have become one-party affairs. The extinction of moderate members of Congress means that the federal government lurches from one gridlock to the next, and I see no reason to hope that this will ever get better. I think evolution of local politics into one-party systems is also bad for the country, but I'll leave that for another rant.
What to do? I can't think of any realistic way to reform the US political system to address this problem. So, on to the unrealistic proposals. I grew up in the South in a family of Northern carpetbaggers and then moved north for college and stayed. Growing up in the South, steeped in the lingering ideology of secession, left me with a strong sympathy for the concept of secession. Surely the basic human right to self-determination should include the right to choose our own political unions. I can't help applying this framework to problems around the world: why should Flemings and Walloons be forced to pretend they are all happy Belgians? Why should Africa be cursed with the arbitrary borders that the European colonialists drew?
All this leads me to wonder whether perhaps the least bad of the unrealistic solutions to the US's political problems is to optimize the political union size. If the old Confederacy can't get along with the rest of the USA, why should they and we suffer? Yes, a libertarian theocracy is a contradiction, but, if that's what the residents of the CSA think they want, I prefer that they attempt that as a separate country than that they try to transform my country into one.
Now, how to get there? Perhaps secession was a simple issue in 1861, but it's not now. These days the US has a real federal government, with assets and obligations, and, as in any divorce, dividing them up would be complicated. Consider Texas as a starting point. Texas has a little under 10% of the US population (8.2%, according to the 2013 estimates). I think that implies that a hypothetical Republic of Texas gets about $1.4 trillion of the current $16.8 trillion US debt. I'm sure that the hypothetical supporters of the Republic of Texas would argue that they shouldn't take the debt with them, and they would be wrong.
There are other complicated issues related to assets and obligations. Lots of folks bought US bonds expecting that the full faith and credit of the United States stood behind them. With Texas's current high bond rating, transforming 8% of their bonds into Republic of Texas bonds wouldn't make much difference, but I don't think the Chinese investors would be so happy with a vault full of Republic of Mississippi bonds.
Most Texans have been paying into the Social Security system: how would that obligation get transferred? What about the hypothetical Texians' obligation to pay the Social Security benefits of the remaining 92% of the US population.
Next, after the financial accounts, the question of who gets the house and the furniture. Who gets Big Bend National Park, and Yellowstone? As divorce questions go, Texas is much easier than, say, Alaska: because of the way that they became states (Texas an independent republic, Alaska as a territory), the US federal government owns only 1.8% of Texas, while it owns 62% of the Alaska (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf). For Alaska, that's a whole lot of assets to argue about. And the furniture: who gets all the F/A-18s? The USS Texas? The federal highways? Hoover Dam? The TVA?
Beyond arguing about who gets the silver and who gets the house, there's the question of who gets the kids, or, in this case, everyone? Would current residents of Texas be entitled to a US passport if they wanted one? Would US residents be entitled to emigrate to Texas? Would Texians and USians have reciprocal rights to work? What would the border look like? USA-Canada, circa 1980 (road signs announcing the border and little buildings here and there inviting folks to stop in for coffee)? USA-Mexico circa 2020 (fencing reaching the sky guarded by laser-armed robots)? What about sub-state level regions? Could Austin secede from Texas and rejoin the USA if Texas seceded from the USA? Beyond citizenship and residency, would Texas continue to use the US dollar? Would it inherit membership in NATO? NAFTA? The NCAA?
I have opinions about some of these issues, but I don't think I have definitive answers on most them, so I propose a cop-out: rather than amending the constitution to spell all of this out, I would propose an amendment to the US constitution that would create a clear but constrained process for secession, but that would require the seceding states to negotiate a divorce decree with Congress. Here's my first draft of the constitutional amendment:
Proposed Amendment to the United States Constitution
Any state, or any group of states, shall have the right to
propose an Article of Secession to the United States Congress. This proposal
shall take the form of a law duly passed through the normal legislative process
in the state or states, subject to the further requirement that the Article,
after being passed, be subject to approval through referendum by public vote,
and shall be approved only if a majority of at least two-thirds of the votes
cast and at least half of the eligible voters in each state proposing to secede
vote in favor of the Article. Upon approval of the Article of Secession by the
governments and peoples of the proposed seceding states, the United States
Congress shall consider the proposal and vote on the Article within one calendar year. If the House
of Representatives and the Senate each approve the Article by majority of at
least two-thirds of eligible votes, the Article shall take force.
By requiring approval by Congress, this proposal puts the burden on secessionists to talk their way out of the Union, and perhaps that's too strong. I'm tempted to propose some mechanism through which a secession movement could force its way out, but I can't think of a way to do that that would prevent a "dead-beat dad" approach, in which the secession movement shirks its responsibilities to the USA on the way out.
