Early this year, I wrote about the possibility of a civil war in the States. The is always the same reason why individual states get restless and want to secede from the Union. This reason is simple. The United States is a confederate of states which freely agree to be part of the larger union. If any state decides no longer to belong to that confederation, there is a constitutional impetus which may allow such a state to separate. There is no compelling reason for any state to surrender state's rights for the sake of the whole. State rights are enshrined in law.
Now, there are several issues which may push any particular state out of the union. The first is simply state sovereignty. A state can decide as a unite to be part of the union if that state both believes in the sacredness of that union and the viability. For example, if the United States Federal Government went bankrupt, but an individual state was financial sound, there could be no compelling reason for that state to give over state assets to bail out the Federal Government. In the EU, this is the same argument happening over Greece, Spain, and Portugal, for example.
Secondly, moral issues which were once held sacred by the Federal Government are no longer held so by the Executive and perhaps elements of the judicial branch. Civil marriage for same sex couples or abortion would fall into these categories of moral stands taken by some states in opposition to the Federal Government.
Thirdly, a state may not desire to support a particular effort or law, such as Obamacare, and decide not to cooperate with a national mandate.
I am a states' rights advocate. I believe that if the Federal Government oversteps its boundaries set down by the Constitution, or if the Executive Branch becomes too powerful, the states individually, or as a group, have the right to secede from an already faulty union. However, I would hope such a secession would be peaceful and not a repetition of the bloodiest war our country has ever seen.
If you do not think we are divided, take a look at this map. One of the experts on States' rights, J. Layne, writes this,
States' rights is about the states being able to maintain their individual identities in the community of states. Each state is a unique and sovereign being that has a right to exist and direct itself to prosperity, within the limits it has agreed to in the Constitutional compact. One of President Washington's U.S. Attorneys observed that the Federal Constitution effectively is incorporated into the state constitutions. In other words, each state has its government, its laws, its constitution. The Federal Constitution simply is like an amendment to each state's constitution, sharing power with the federal government. As such, the federal power is delegated power, and that delegation comes from the people of each state, as James Madison himself admitted in an exchange with Patrick Henry at Virginia's ratifying convention. And the power that delegates may undelegate. That's as firm a principle of American freedom as any that can be named. So it follows from this, or at least the South argued, that each state could undelegate the power it had once granted the federal government.
He added in a private interview that
States' rights is not about racism. That is unfortunately what it has often been tied to. That was an abuse of states' rights. States rights at its core is about local control. The states pre-existed the federal government, and they made the federal government. The federal government is a creature. The states are creators. That government which is closest to the people and still able to fulfill its proper functions is the best government. So that's what states' rights is and should be about, not guaranteeing a state's "right" to do something it and no government may do, which is to enslave or oppress racial minorities.