The most frustrating thing in all of this is that people of our mindset want primarily to be left alone to live our own lives. We do not seek to impose our ideology on others, unless you count our desire to "impose" against them looting our wallets for things the government has not been empowered to do.
Governing a people who do not want to be governed requires coercion -- continuous, pervasive coercion. And even then it cannot last forever. That's where we're at now. I consider the US Federal government illegitimate. Not because a small majority of voters disagreed with me in an election, but because it is in open violation of its contract with me. Coercion is the only tool it has now, and the more it uses it the more it paints itself into a corner.
The only peaceful solution at this point would be for people to accept that this Union is no longer mutually beneficial, and that individual states should be allowed to leave it if that is the will of their people. This Union has become too big, too populous, and most significant of all: too different. Any attempt to impose a single government onto it is just that, an imposition.
