There are large parts of Florida and the Southwest that have American as a second language, and so many of those homes don't understand the language at all. While that has always been the case in some of our urban areas such as New York, San Francisco, Honolulu and others, there were numerous pressures to amalgamate the people, at least by the next generation. Now we not only forgive this "balkanazation," we subsidize it i.e. we encourage it. We put no premium on at least the next generation getting with the program.
Our older institutions are getting routed and our rebuilt institutions don't force the next generation to have a clue as to what their true rights are or why. We also belittle any affection toward "our country" as archaic, xenophobic and not chic.
For those that consider Lincoln to be a marxist of his day, I give you Olympia Snow, Jim Jeffords, Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter. By this I mean we are getting so horribly polarized as a political body that there can be no basis for communication. I don't want any part of their vision of what this country should be.
In California we can see the catastrophe that is wrought by so many ultra liberal policies that even today politicians are loathe to decry. It can't be long before the Northeast follows in those footsteps.
Today you have a supposed conservative administration that wants to spend money growing programs so fast it would embarrass Hubert Humphrey or Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, the radical liberals of the last generation.
Yes, I would say this nation could split along numerous seems, mostly caused by plans to subsidize activities that can't be economically sustained. It won't happen in the next year, or the next five, but has to eventually given trends. When it does, the separate parts will be so regionalized, and the things that really made this country great will be so expunged from our memory that there won't be anyone left to suggest an alternative.
I've been mulling this over and I think you're correct. My guess is that unless current trends change, California will be first. By analogy (a poor mode of reasoning, I realize), it's quite similar to what happened to the Episcopal church, which in my lifetime was (fairly accurately) known as "The Republican Party at prayer."
The liberals got control in the 60s and started changing things. In "modernizing" the liturgy (in the process losing the very beautiful Cranmerian language -- yes it is archaic, but it's easily understood) they altered the doctrines. There were some bitter fights, and the first round of departures began.
Then it got worse. In the early 80s my rector (for whom I still retain much love and respect, though he has passed on) got a bit frosted when, as a delegate to the diocesan convention, I not only voted against supporting the Nuclear Freeze Initiative, I questioned why the church was involved in secular political issues. (I was a bit more naive then.)
Soon after I moved away and just could not associate with any of the churches here, so (making a long story short) I joined the departures as I became an Anglican. The depatures slowed to a trickle, until the recent confirmation of Vicki Gene Robinson, who divorced his wife and then became the first openly practicing queen bishop, which is roiling much of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Soon, I suspect, they will have driven anyone who isn't extremely left-wing out. And they will own the church's extensive properties, free and clear. At least until they've run them into the ground.
Would it have been different if we'd all stayed and fought until the very last man standing? I don't know. I consider that the changes that brought about the first departures were already bitterly fought -- and lost. The liberals have a basic advantage in that there is nothing so low that they won't stoop to it in order to WIN; and most conservatives and moderates are hampered by the failure to recognize that we're engaged in a winner-take-all social war. Rudyard Kipling illustrated this in his story The Mother Hive.
Now think of California and what the liberals are doing. For individual reasons, rationally made, the more conservative are leaving. Taxation, regulation, affordability, the moral climate -- there are all sorts of reasons to leave. How many years it will take I have no idea (I'm still guessing, mind you), but it is conceivable that at some point the supporters of the Aztlan movement (or whatever it is called) to change "ownership" of California to Mexico will surpass the opposition. Certainly some of the recent actions, Motor Voter and Illegal Aliens Get Driver's Licenses, move things in that direction. And America's Left will support the give-away.