Given the increasing centralization of pwer in D.C., you think this is even possible?
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.