What do you suppose would be the result of such a "Declaration of Independence" today? What if, say, in order to pay for the burgeoning Social Security retirement benefits of an aging population, federal taxation rates were to become so onerous that States, or parts thereof, were to declare independence from the USA? What if, say, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations were to vote to secede from the Union? Obviously in so doing it would lose all Social Security transfer payments inuring to the poor and elderly, so we can well imagine that communities with an overabundance of those populations would be against secession. (Those communities would include urban centers like West and South Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls, and Woonsocket, although if Providence continues to purge Lonelyville and the Wharf district of its lower castes, these newly gentrified neighborhoods would join the ranks of their affluent peers.)

The mind boggles.