This commentary is inspired by Wineapple’s book Ecstatic Nation, reviewed elsewhere on this blog.  While I marvel at America’s luck in ending the Civil War without an endless insurgency, in many ways our Civil War did not end in 1865.  For a hundred years Jim Crow laws continued the subjugation of black Americans, and the civil rights movement , which peaked in the 1960s, was very regional in America.  Even today some writers say two thirds of the members of Congress who figured in the recent U.S. government shutdown are from the old Confederacy.  (See http://bit.ly/1c4wJcc and scroll down to “Confederate Heritage”, or see the Atlantic’s count at http://bit.ly/1aTtqnu  )

The anti-government political position goes beyond any residual racism.  Consider that Wineapple says that, by the end of the Civil war, the Confederacy was ready to give up slavery but not their independence as a sovereign nation.

Today there seems to be an international anti-Union movement.  I have read about ethnic groups in Belgium wanting to split their nation.  Catalonia has citizens who want to secede from Spain.  Countries that were created by the Ottoman Empire, European colonial empires, or the Soviet Union are falling apart: consider the old Yugoslavia and the various Middle Eastern countries.

Returning to the U.S., the anti-Federal government movement does not seem to be accompanied by a major anti-State government movement yet, although in Colorado six counties did just vote to secede from their State http://bit.ly/19AsENs

My first thought was that the urge to secede grows from a sense of being overtaxed on the Federal level  But a look at a map of the U.S. coded to show which States are “makers” and which are “takers” http://bit.ly/w80Lgh does not support this view.  Many pundits would say red/conservative/Republican states are makers and blue/liberal/Democratic states are takers, but that is not necessarily the case.

“The heart of the 51st State Initiative is simple: We just want to be left alone to live our lives without heavy-handed restrictions from the state Capitol,” said a secessionist http://bit.ly/19AsENs  But being truly and completely “left alone” would not return us to an idyllic past; such a past never existed.  Our Founding Fathers broke from England in part because the King “refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”

I reviewed Steven Pinker’s book Better Angles of Our Natures on this blog and I’ve returned to it often.  Pinker explores the factors that lead to less violence in societies, and it seems to me those factors apply to the growth of civilization in general:

• State enforcement replaces personal vengeance and defending “individual honor”.
• Commerce makes it better to tolerate others than fight them.
• Sympathy for others expands from kin to tribe and beyond.
• Trends towards reason, self-control, and orientation to the future.

I don’t see why breaking down into smaller and smaller political units, until we are each living in an area where everyone agrees with us, would be good for me or for society.  Taken to unreasonable extremes, this view would have us living under warlords or standing at our front doors with guns.

That doesn’t mean one group within a society should accept being treated unfairly, but I think supporting the public good is enlightened self-interest.  Our unique system of checks and balances allows Americans to avert unfair treatment, even though it usually take a while to achieve.

The Civil War changed our nation forever.  There was “a new birth of freedom” (to quote President Abraham Lincoln.)  We became citizens of our nation first and our states second; the “peoples” of the various states became “the people” of the United States.  Since then, we have prospered as a nation and as individuals.

I believe we are stronger together and, as Jonathan Haidt shows , we need each other.  I hope the U.S. gets through our current polarization quickly and that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.”