The United States is a rogue state violating international law in many, many ways that California wouldn't have to if it seceded and became a nation.

I can't say with certainty that slavery would have ended more quickly and more completely if the South had been allowed to leave and escaped former slaves had been allowed to remain free, and the North and the rest of the world had been a positive influence on the South. However, it's certainly a possibility that it would have ended sooner if the southern slave owners had agreed to a system of compensated emancipation and freed the slaves without a war and without secession, as most nations that ended slavery did. That absolutely would have been preferable to the Civil War as it happened.

Imagine Jon Stewart if he gave a damn. He's like Howard Zinn after 12 beers.

I'm not convinced that the people of Arizona as a nation couldn't do better to protect equal rights for all than the people of Arizona as part of the United States, which is actually not helping them much.

I think it's more likely that we can make positive changes happen on environment and military issues if states begin to secede. I don't think it's question of personal lifestyle preference or some sort of parochial identification with your state. I think it's an absolute moral demand that something be done to create a government with some power that can be controlled by the residents of its territory. That was supposedly the idea in creating the United States, but it doesn't exist now and we have to make it exist even if it's piece by piece, part of the United States at a time.

The Pentagon is supposed to be under civilian control and it ought to be up to the people of the United States, not the profiteers.

No other nation killed people the way the United States did to end slavery.