A wonderful idea! Of course, you’d need to negotiate a treaty with the US before you left your farm. And you probably need a way to protect yourself—if I come

A wonderful idea! Of course, you’d need to negotiate a treaty with the US before you left your farm. And you probably need a way to protect yourself—if I come and kill you, who’d enforce the law?! (You have laws, don’t you?). And what about trade? Declaring your farm a country is probably more trouble than it’s worth—-but what about your state or region? Wouldn’t it be nice to belong to a right-sized political system? One where you know and have access to your political representatives? Wouldn’t it be nice to set policy based on what you and your neighbors think, without a care about the opinions of strangers who live thousands of miles away (and have their own problems and concerns)? Sure you’d miss the single market—-but you don’t need political union for that. Nor do you need political union to provide for the common defense. The fact that an idea appears impractical at first glance is no reason to reject it. Remember when democracy was generally understood to be impracticable?