Over time they may have received some legal status due to court case, but it is my understanding that if a state wanted to eliminate all cities and counties and govern everything on the state level this would be allowed by the Constitution.
Of course, if a state had given counties and cities individual legal status in the past they would have to go through legal means to eliminate those distinctions, but if the people voted for it then everything could be done at the state level.
So the idea that individual counties or cities could decide to secede is utopian at best and delusional at worst.
If anything, the historical process has been more and more centralization of government rather than decentralizations. The Constitution has been used by progressives to advance individual rights over all others. The ultimate point is to completely atomize the public so that it is a bunch of deracinated individuals governed by a single central bureaucracy.
This is why libertarians are ultimately not the friends of conservatives because they overvalue individual rights over the rights of all of the intermediate institutions such as the family, church, fraternal organizations, cities, counties, etc. that protect the individual from the leviathan state.
well then consider the premise of red states allied with red counties in blue states.
the blue states would be placed in the position of denying their red counties the right to self determination via partition.
the red counties in blue states (BSRCs) would then hypothetically be capable of non violently withdrawing services from large blue state cities until the large blue state cities saw the light and would let the red counties partition off.
the BSRCs would then be free to join the red states that have already partitioned.
it would be up to the remaining blue states to form a mutual self defense treaty with the red states— fairly routine, if NATO is any example, and a formidable challenge to any invader considering the natural invasion barrier to the whole formed by the atlantic and pacific oceans.
imaginative, yes. but bad times violence avoidence calls for good imagination.
i view politics as a struggle for two visions— individual rights versus collective responsibilities.
ideally there needs to be a balance between individual rights and collective responsibilities in the social contract as reflected in the various government jurisdictions.
perhaps there will never be an ultimate bright line between the laws reflecting the conflicting principles.
it does not mean imho that we throw out one wholesale in favor of the other.
libertarians favor individual rights. where they go too far may be in addictive drugs and open borders.
communists favor collective rights. they also go too far, but they have a point where national defense and tariffs are concerned.
if one is allowed to control the other then we might be doomed as the roman empire was during its fall.
Counties are sub-divisions of the State. Cities and towns are municipal corporations