The US Constitution Is Now a Suicide Pact
con
05/22/2026
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Mises Wire
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The United States is rapidly heading toward a future that will require a decision from political authorities and elites of all types. The choice will be between peaceful radical decentralization—possibly including secession—on the one hand. On the other hand will be a ratcheting up of coercion and enforced “unity” to ensure political centralization.
The speed with which American polities proceed toward this situation will depend on two factors, both of which are already at play and contribute to ongoing talk of “national divorce” in the United States. The two factors are:
1. A growing ideological and geographic bifurcation between populations.
2. Growing centralization of state power which raises the stakes for competing cultural and ideological groups.
The first factor has been illustrated by at least two different developments. The first is that described in Bill Bishop’s book, The Big Sort, in which Americans are increasingly moving to states and cities that reflect their own ideological and cultural views. This has apparently even accelerated in the wake of the Covid Panic. But this is also found in non-geographic factors, and recent polls, including this one from Gallup, which prompted Gallup’s researchers to conclude that Americans are increasingly polarized:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/us-constitution-now-suicide-pact
