The fact of the matter is that just as the decision in Britain was motivated by a growing sense that the leadership of the EU was out of touch with the voices of its people, there is and has been a growing sense that the federal government in the US is out of touch with the majority of Americans. Would I like to see a state like Texas be the Britain of the US, kicking off a domino effect that'd send this bloated system crashing down? Absolutely. Do I think it's likely in the near future? Probably not, but not for any reason so blunt as threats of military force. Nowadays, it would look horrible for the President to even suggest that such action could be forthcoming in retaliation if a state voted democratically to secede. No, what I think truly separates the US from the EU in this case is plain old scale and momentum. The US has been its own independent, unified country for over 200 years. Compare that to the European Union, which has existed for less than a quarter of that. Also, as KiWi mentioned, the US is more homogenized. For those 200+ years we've been around, we've grown up with a shared language and shared core principles. While each state may have its own cultural identities (Texans are cowboys y'all, New Yahkas always defend the pizza place they grew up with to the death, Californians are gay, etc), the prevailing mentality has always been that they are an addition to our national identity. With Europe, they have hundreds of years of national identity and their own cultural distinctness that comes with it. You simply cannot, as I've said before, cannot lump an entire continent with that kind of cultural diversity together and expect to be able to avoid disenfranchising absolutely everyone. Now with that being said I don't think this makes it impossible that states may decide to secede from the US, just that it would take a lot longer to gain traction than the idea of Britain leaving the EU. A couple of decades down the line? Who knows.
Edited by Shokkou, 25 June 2016 - 07:43 AM.
