The United States should dissolve

The USA as a country of individualistic capitalism is, unfortunately, finished. For various reasons, some states – Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and soon South Carolina among them – will vote for capitalism and individualism less and less, preferring socialism and collectivism. Other states will move in the opposite direction, but the USA as a whole will become more like the EU: more left-wing and more bureaucratic.

If you value freedom and capitalism, the best path is to decentralize the individual states and the United States itself, up to the point of dissolution. The countries of New Hampshire or Wyoming would be perfection. The countries of California, Texas, New Mexico or Mississippi – not so much, but they too could dissolve into smaller units. Northern California (Redding and up) combined with southern Oregon would be amazing, and so would eastern Washington State.

The United States of America should never have happened as a country. Unfortunately, the Anti-Federalists and Thomas Jefferson lost to the Federalists and Alexander Hamilton, who laid the ground for the continued centralization of power in Washington, DC – a process that accelerated after Woodrow Wilson, accelerated further under FDR, and then again under Johnson, Bush Junior and Obama.

The best course for freedom-loving people living on the territory currently known (by the bureaucrat class) as the United States of America is to advocate for the total independence of their state. In some states that independence would lead to more socialism and less freedom, at least in the short term; in others, the reverse.

American culture is defined by individualism and capitalism, which produced high-trust societies. That is being lost in most places – less so in places that are rural and demographically stable. Such places, however, become good places to do business, which attracts brainwashed college graduates and others whose voting patterns and behaviour are not conducive to preserving a high-trust, capitalist, individualist society. That is how California and Colorado moved left, and it is what is happening to the southern states now. To be fair, these states also have large shares of native-born populations who have never understood or appreciated the ideas of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson – and who are very eager to tear down their statues. These people are highly susceptible to socialism, as their voting patterns show; their birth rates have been higher, and more and more of them vote.

Just as the EU is bad for Germany and Germany is bad for Bavaria, the USA has, in the long run, been bad for California, and California has been bad for its northern counties. There is absolutely no reason those northern counties should not be allowed to govern themselves – just as there is no reason Bavaria has to be part of a failing, bureaucratic Germany and the EU, while Switzerland is not, and neither is the richest, freest and best-managed country in the world: Liechtenstein. It is tiny, has only about 40,000 citizens and is so low-key that almost no one knows about it, but it is a literal heaven on earth.

"One nation under God" and the Pledge of Allegiance are, at their core, left-wing, collectivist ideas. In fact, after the Revolutionary War the whole idea of American patriotism was often used to unite people around ideas that eroded their individual liberty. The right used it more than the left, but that is beginning to change: the American flag as a symbol of national unity will increasingly be used by the collectivists on the left, just as it was used by the collectivists on the right for things like the Patriot Act and the invasion of Iraq. Medicare for All will be painted red, white and blue.

What I am saying now sounds like insanity. But imagine President El-Sayed, Vice President Harris, Senate Majority Leader Mamdani, Speaker AOC, a Supreme Court packed 20–5 to the left dismantling the Second, then the First and finally the Fourth Amendment, and a Senate and House with permanent Democratic majorities à la California, where the opposing Republicans are merely a different strain of collectivist (fascist instead of socialist). Then you will understand how American patriotism will slowly become antithetical to freedom, capitalism, states' rights and individual liberty – as the EU flag is today.

Local pride is a different story. Loving New Hampshire (or your own country there) would have far more merit than (forcibly) loving the United States of America. If the USA dissolved into thousands of small, decentralized countries with direct democracy, à la Liechtenstein and Switzerland, most people would be better off. Thomas Jefferson would probably agree – while seeing what the USA has become would give him an immediate heart attack.

In the next few years AI and robotics will make most, if not all, jobs unnecessary, so the distribution of resources and products will become an important endeavour for humanity. Marxists will claim that big, centralized states should be in charge of it, and they will use fear to expand their power; losing the US federal government to them is, in the short run, very bad. But technologies are being built that make people ungovernable while making voluntary distribution – sharing – easier. Either way, interesting times are coming.