The Declaration makes a simple argument:
1. Humans have rights from the Creator
2. Governments exist to secure those rights (a debatable assertion but we’ll roll with it.)
3. When the government fails to secure those rights, we can ditch it and start our own government.
That’s pretty much all it says. If you thought that was true in 1776, when tax rates were 1% and there was no such thing as a the EPA or the FBI or the IRS, why is it not true now? Because we’re so much more free now? And, no, the Declaration did not say that the government is free to violate rights as long as people get to vote on it.
The Declaration establishes that there’s no such thing as treason, and a free government requires the assumption of just secession.
Thus the whole Revolution [of 1775–1783] turned upon, asserted, and, in theory, established, the right of each and every man, at his discretion, to release himself from the support of the government under which he had lived. And this principle was asserted, not as a right peculiar to themselves, or to that time, or as applicable only to the government then existing; but as a universal right of all men, at all times, and under all circumstances.
Bump
Keep in mind though that secession or autonomy or whatever you want to call political divorce has many facets. Some more extreme than others. Frankly I think that secession in the form of having a complete divorce and establishment of a new country is not in the cards. At least not yet. However some pieces of the whole obtaining greater political autonomy almost certainly IS in the cards.
Ultimately a group of people (state or region) have a right to call it quits. The big question always is what the other side does, if anything, to force them to stay within the status quo.
Bfl