Secession is a dirty word in the Lincoln-worshipping ultra-nationalistic United States, where both left and right worship at the altar of the centralized state. To support secession in any way, shape, or form is to be labeled "neo-Confederate" by our logic-challenged pundits, who eagerly swoop down on anyone who challenges Washington's supremacy. These geniuses forget that the American Revolution was an act of secession, in which the colonists separated themselves from a tyrannical monarchy that sought to tax and regulate them without their consent.

In the rest of the world, however, localism is on the rise as people rebel against the edicts of distant bureaucrats and reassert their language, their traditions, and their sense of place. Throughout Europe, especially, these rebellions are gaining strength, from Scotland to Wallonia to eastern Ukraine – and now to Catalonia, which is voting in what has become a referendum on the national question.