Should the U.S. break up into smaller distinct nations?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Should the U.S. break up into smaller distinct nations?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, the US should break into smaller nations
Argument1 of 3›: America’s time is up

No one likes an aging star, and admittedly America had a nice run. They wrote a pretty good Constitution, won two world wars, invented the internet, and were the first men on the moon. Now, in the midst of a mess, it might be time to cut America’s losses.

The argument

America used to be the beacon of freedom for the world. Now the country are the ones with children in cages, paramilitary on the streets of our cities, and being monitored by Amnesty International. We used to oversee other country’s elections. Now they want to monitor ours. We used to be the place people ran to for safety. Now we are the pariahs of the world, our passports unable to take us almost anywhere in the context of Covid-19. Canadian jokes aside, many have considered fleeing north, either in jest or in all seriousness. Many argue that the issues plaguing the United States today, notably climate change, race relations, the economy, among many others, are better solved separately than together. Already, many argue that the Constitution is in need of a serious facelift. By comparison – France is on their fifth! Instead of re-writing the Constitution as a whole, states could do as they pleased to right the issues in their own way. The United States has always been a country to prioritize states’ rights. It is time to face facts that America has expired, and merely needs to throw away the spoiled milk.

Premises

[P1]Proponents argue the US has fallen from a beacon of freedom to a country marked by crises in race relations, the economy, and civil liberties, and now viewed as a pariah abroad. [P2] They hold that these problems—and a Constitution seen as overdue for reform—would be better solved by states acting separately, consistent with America's tradition of prioritising states' rights. [C] Because America's time is up, the US should break into smaller distinct nations.

Counter-arguments

America issues are relative. When Americans lament over things like our “happiness,” specifically that we aren’t “happy enough” they forget that the comparison to countries like Finland is seriously pointless. It is only fruitful to compare America the other “great” countries of the world, with “greatness” denoting size, population, economy, global influence, and other similar factors. Therefore, it is only just to make comparisons to China, Japan, Germany, India, and Russia. China currently puts its Muslim population in vast concentration camps, Japan’s women are living in a beyond an antiquated patriarchy, a huge chunk of the population lives like the third world in India, and the pillars of truth and justice of Russia are not known for their solid standing. Every country of this size has its faults. Perhaps Germany is “happier” while still being successful, but their population is a quarter of the size or less compared to the rest of these countries. America, united, has its faults, but the issues aren’t ones that are solved by breaking up.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise assembles grievances of very different kinds — immigration detention, policing, standing abroad, travel restrictions during a pandemic — into a single narrative of decline, and offers no measure by which the country is worse than at earlier periods it treats as the standard. [Rejecting P2] Nothing connects the diagnosis to the remedy: the problems named are national or global in scope, and separate states would face climate change, macroeconomic policy and civil-rights enforcement with fewer instruments rather than more; the comparison with France's five republics also cuts the other way, since those were successive constitutions of one continuing state rather than its dissolution.