Irreconcilable differences?

It's somewhat amusing to see the disbelief with which many people react to the idea the United States could break up in the future. Don't get me wrong: I believe such an event would have negative consequences not only for us but for a large part of the world, as our internal problems finally overwhelm our ability to sustain what good we do still manage to do (including keeping a lid on folks like this and this).

So yes, I can sympathize with the horror and disgust at contemplating such an event. It's the thought we're somehow exempt from the laws of history that causes my rueful chuckling.

What other outcome could one expect, from turning our national motto on its head so that now "from one," we get "many?" Is it so difficult to imagine how promoting mutually antithetical 'identities' and coddling sworn enemies of our society might cause a few fissures here and there? Finally, to paraphrase the Great Statist himself, can a society long endure half productive and half parasitical? All bills come due eventually, and we have a number landing in the mailbox these days.

After 40+ years of 'culture war' the lines seem starkly drawn. The unchecked influx and lack of assimilation of millions of new residents from cultures far different than traditional America only further dissolves the glue barely holding it all together. As the rhetoric grows shriller and the imprudent among us lash out, the potential futures begin to grow cloudy.

Isn't it ironic that many of the same people who believe marriage--a union far more intimate than anything Lincoln claimed to preserve--ought to be separable for any and all reasons also believe in forcing mutually hostile camps to live under the same national roof? One camp wants to be left alone; the other's ideology won't permit it. What are the odds this will end well?

A nation preserved with liberty trampled underfoot is much worse than a nation in fragments but with the spirit of liberty still alive. Southerners persistently claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of government.
- Private John Haley, 17th Maine Regiment (USA)