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That was the idea; 50 countries, or states, working together as one. Hence the name: the United States
This “unpopular opinion” is literally just “I wish the Brits won”
The Brits did win. America fell back into the British sphere of influence following the French Revolution and the US's humiliating defeat in the War of 1812. America continued to fulfill the role British Aristocrats intended for it, as a subservant trading partner and expansionary military outpost, minus the real cost of empire falling on the backs of British aristocrats. While Americans colonized the rest of the continent, the British Empire continued to expand globally for the next century, hitting its apotheosis in the Crimean War, and then going into retreat following WW1 and WW2.
But even then, British financial interests embedded in the American post-war system continued to enrich themselves enormously straight through Thatcher and Blair. It wasn't until the '08 Financial Crisis that England truly decoupled from the American economy and plunged into irrelevancy.
A British "victory" against American rebels wouldn't have deterred subsequent uprisings, just delayed them for another few years. The bleed on the UK treasury would have continued until America was formally integrated into the British Commonwealth or they were officially cut loose. The American faux-democracy of the 19th century was in the best interests of all parties in the long run.
I wouldn't say that the Brits won, buy they were able to negotiate a managed peace with the USA which benefited both parties.
The Monroe Doctrine was a British idea which got the USA to act as a power to preserve the post revolution status quo, allow for British trade access, and let the UK keep its remaining colonies.
You also had a peaceful resolution of the border between Canada and the USA, something which the UK wouldn't have pushed for if it was trying to be militarily dominant over the USA in the Americas.
The last time that the USA and UK could possibly be considered unaligned was the American Civil War. With that, the UK made sure not to recognize the CSA nor did it participate in recolonization efforts in the Americas like the French in Mexico.
Interesting. I've never heard that the Americans lost the war of 1812, but apparently that's how it's taught in Canada.
People in the U.S.A. forget that "state" means a sovereign nation. Why are the "United States" not actually states? Taxes. Actually thats basically it. After what would be known as U.S.A. was founded, taxes where opt in. but the burgeoning central government was on the hook for all its international debts. and of course no state wanted to pay taxes...or did pay taxes. So they restructured and the "federal" goverment became superior to all states and its power has grown while states rights diminished. So yeah, in some ways wed be alot better if states where thier own sovereignty, and the founding fathers even put a stipulation that any state unhappy with the union can leave, but the last states to do that got the **** beat out of them and it was made illegal (CSA / Civil war).
TLDR; Founding states didn't want to pay taxes, federal government was formed to collect taxes.
the founding fathers even put a stipulation that any state unhappy with the union can leave, but the last states to do that got the **** beat out of them and it was made illegal (CSA / Civil war).
The CSA didn't get their asses kicked for leaving the Union. The CSA got their asses kicked for starting the hot war by attacking Fort Sumter 2 months after seceded. The CSA also doubled-down on keeping slavery legal in their Constitution which burned any bridges for support from Europe which had already abolished slavery long before.
FYI, I didn't downvote you.
yeah. It wasn't clear in my comment but I wasn't trying to say they where put down just for seceding (Though to Lincoln it was a way more important thing than slavery) but that they are the most notable case of states leaving the union and they got beat the shit out of, two separate things.
and the founding fathers even put a stipulation that any state unhappy with the union can leave
What are you referring to?
I don't know, and I even briefly tried looking it up.
while no explicit mention of secession, the very act of the revolution and statements such as "...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…" and "...When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..."have been used to show the idea the founding fathers supported secession.
Only a handful of times has anyone in the U.S.A. seceded, though most of the times it was just to create a new states in the U.S.A. It was officially outlawed after the C.S.A. seceded and not much of any serious attempt has been made since.
while no explicit mention of secession, the very act of the revolution and statements such as “…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” and "…When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…"have been used to show the idea the founding fathers supported secession.
Neither of those are in the US Constitution. Those are from the Declaration of Independence.
That's a far cry from a stipulation that any state unhappy with the union could leave. While the Declaration of Independence is an important founding document of our country, it does not have the force of law.
I would argue secession as it was imagined by the rebel states was implicitly unconstitutional already. That was certainly the position of the Union during the Civil War. You can't guarantee individual rights of U.S. citizens in the Constitution and allow states to free themselves from the obligation to respect those rights by just choosing to secede.
We do have the ability to dissolve the union as envisioned by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence, but it can't be done unilaterally by any one state. We could do it with a constitutional amendment.
The only other way is through blood and death. As you point out, that hasn't worked so far.
lol no. It might be better off for the world if the US was balkanized but absolutely not for the US. Size and diversity are not the sources of the US's problems. In fact, the EU would be better off more unified if it could manage it.
If the US were Balkanized, there would be a never-ending series of (potentially nuclear) wars to control the continent, plus the wars that would break out in places across the globe that only don't have wars because the US has a vested interest in there not being a war in a given location, plus the inevitable takeover of any given location that China has had its eye on.
So... better for the world in the sense that global mayhem even more than we currently experience is better for whom, exactly?
I did not mean proper balkanization with interstate wars. Just breaking up the US as OP suggested.
Regardless, the idea that the US's imperialism has brought peace to the world is deeply unserious. As well is your notion that China would be the new global aggressor. At worst it would be the regional hegemon that it has historically been. Israel and the UAE have been far more aggressive than that and with the US's backing.
It wouldn’t last. Think of the Futurama quote about Friends: “Why does Ross, the largest friend, not just eat the others?”. Ignoring what we would have to do with all the nuclear weapons and federal waste, the neighboring states would simply expand to consume their lesser brethren. Cascadia might arise from California, Oregon, and Washington — but the damage that the Second United States This Time Keeping Slavery would do to the surrounding area would be untold. Not worth it IMO.
Cascadia might arise from California, Oregon, and Washington
And go on to cannibalize the "independent" states of the mountain west. Like, Utah isn't operating as an independent territory. They don't even have enough water rights to exist as they stand.
They might, or they might let it die on the vine along with Idaho and Montana and Nevada. Also, water “rights” probably won’t matter much in the case of a dissolution like this.
At a certain point, water rights would come from the end of a gun.
I think European countries actually have their own significant cultural differences (and language barriers) that's keeping them from centralizing further. US states are more or less the same culturally. The geographic-based cultural divide would be urban vs rural.
more or less the same culturally
Tell me you don’t know how diverse the US without knowing how diverse the US is.
Got to the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas and then to the Deep South and then New England and I challenge you to call them culturally the same.
As states, they're very similar. You'll see people flying the Confederate flag in rural parts of all states, and pockets of significant hispanic population in nearly all states as well. I've been to all those places. Many states have kind of a "fractal" geo-demographic phenomenon that kind of mirror the US as a whole (I.e. Ohio with backwards south, liberal-ish north, plenty of hispanic people, and fairly diverse cities). The differences between states are quite minor, IMO.
not 50 seperate ones...but we should definitely let some of these states experience first-hand what not participating/benefiting from this union actually looks like.
let texas leave the union, and all their seats in congress with it...see how quickly they come crawling back to the table
There are lots of things that have been accomplished in the USA that would not have been if each of the 50 states operated as separation nations. Besides the obvious of the scientific and medical advancements, the common rules for business across states allows for products and many services to flow mostly uninhibited by each states rules (some exceptions apply).
Having enough resources as a single nation allowed for a common defense which saved the USA a number of times. Apparently this is also one of the reasons some regions of the world fell to colonialism because the various groups that occupied the land were not unified in their goals or defense. It allowed stronger powers to pick of each smaller group separately until the region as a whole was conquered.
I often times wonder if it would be better managed with more of an EU style system where certain standards are core across all states and then leave each country to truly govern themselves.
I like Europe a lot, but they've got some problems directly stemming from the lack of a single nation encompassing all of them. Even to-date there is not a single monetary policy in the EU. This lead to things like the GREXIT crisis. The leadership in Brussels can also get stymied by a single contrarian member halting progress such as Hungary frequently stopping aid to Ukraine.
None of this is to say the USA is perfect or the EU is flawed. There are positives and negatives to both systems. No one has found a perfect system yet.
This right wing masterbatory bullshit.
Why do you want the US to be 50 Independent countries? So you can win the war against Wokeness?
Haha, no. Quite the opposite. I would love for the west coast states and New England to be unburdened by the mouth breathers in the south. It feels like California and other like minded states could at least move the needle closer to a democratic socialist system without having to drag along the red dead weight.
It's just not true that the south is dead weight.
The mississippi-missouri river system is a vital transport corridor that enables cheaper exports and transport around the country. Breaking that up across multiple countries would make everyone poorer.
Large parts of the US would lose easy access to the gulf, the atlantic or the pacific.
The naturally defensible boundaries of the continent represent a massive advantage that would go away and drive up defense spending for all the nationlets.
All of us benefit from the US being a single country in huge ways.
So literally, their only contribution comes entirely from their geographic location?
I’m tired of paying taxes to people who don’t appreciate it, why can’t that money go to the things I actually want? If anything the Trumpites should be happy to be able to continue without the “damn libs”anyway Edit: added quotations around damn libs because I imagine someone could interpret this literally
You don't need to break it into 50 countries to do that...
first get russia to turn into 46 oblasts.
I'll wait.
I'll never get the obsession with "Country should be Lots of Countries", as though balkinization has ever improved the politics or the stability of a region. The Ottoman Empire was a shit region run by shit people, and yet its dissolution only seems to have immiserated the next four generations.
What on earth does anyone think an independent Florida or Volgograd does to improve the current situation? FFS, the issue of nuclear proliferation alone...
Especially that the current US state borders are drawn rather poorly. There are few states that could operate independently. There would immediately be water wars out west and political consolidation in the east. The Mississippi River watershed would require some form of international treaty to handle its trade and use.
And there is a sizeable amount of federalization in the USA. The government of California is not run like the government of West Virginia.
Obviously, the solution is to turn California into 50 Californias
Maybe not 50, but yes many have considered the US should be broken up, same with China etc ... India was already broken up (in a terrible way) but it's now up with China.
I’m fairly certain this was the original goal when the country was founded and the idea of states rights, but at some it feels like things got flipped on their heads.
Amongst other things: a Civil War.
The more I think about things, and how well stuff works in other countries, i believe it’s due to the sheer size and demographic makeup of the country.
I think it is rather because they were all outlaws and outcasts in their beginning, and then some day they made money, and that was all they had dreamed about, and so they simply never changed. If you divide the so-called states now into sovereign areas, they would immediately start fights everywhere.
You would have your next civil war faster than you can say "Putin".
Divide and conquer. Hell yea! Fuck them Americans!
I think it’s very likely we Balkanize soon. The majority of us don’t want to live in a christofacist technofeudal system run by a deranged game show host, Israel and South African apartheid Nazi’ scum survailling us with robo Nazi AI
Trading between states ought to be interesting.
"Hey Vermont, can we buy some of your Maple Syrup?" - Missouri Texas and California would constantly be at war with eachother over political differences.
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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