re: A More Perfect Union - Breaking up US into smaller nation states

This is an incredibly interesting topic and believe it would be worth pursuing for several reasons. One possibility:

Primarily, those “progressive” places would bankrupt themselves within a generation. Afterwards, the “non-progressives” would acquire that area under conservative ideology and law. Thus, the original republic is restored in a very round about way.

Then, the process starts a new and in another 200 or so years another reformation plays out.