A Dissolution of The United States?

This weekend's Wall Street Journal carried an article loosely predicting the splintering of the United States of America into several un-united mega-state blocs. As evidence, the author pointed to an evolving jointly-created Mexican-American economic bloc around San Diego, as well as the writings of the late US foreign policy expert George Kennan.

It's all well and good, and maybe even correct. The general theme of 'smaller is better' and the continuing blunderbuss-style federal government we get certainly have many voters wishing for a time of less federal intrusion into their lives.

But I believe the piece ignored an important feature of both our Constitution and our national character. Our country began as an experiment. The present Constitution is the second try at creating a national US government.

I personally doubt that the 50 states would dis-unite and form blocs of mega-state groups, possibly, in some cases, with other countries.

Isn't it more likely that, before such a schism came about, either the states or Congress, according to the Constitution, would convene a Constitutional Convention to modify the rules by which we govern ourselves?

For example, what state or region wants to forgo the military protection brought about by the ingenuity and economies of scales and mobility of our United States? Or the economic freedoms- fast disappearing though they may be?

Isn't it a better bet that states, with various diverging interests, would convene a convention to weaken the federal government and reclaim more power, perhaps even writing in the right to form multi-state blocs to share certain functions?

For example, I have wondered for years why state 'secretaries of state' need to exist. Some US regions, like the northeast, are geographically so small that many state-level functions could easily be shared. Does each state really need to have a different drivers' license and registration bureau? How many federally-oriented state-level functions could be so much more economically performed by a regional entity? It doesn't mean the states cease to exist, but it does mean more thoughtfully identifying and allocating governmental functions among federal, state, and regional levels.

I believe that, ultimately, our nation is sufficiently flexible that we will rewrite our Constitution and redesign our government to take advantage of regional specialities and the drawbacks of national scale, before we splinter into truly dis-united regional blocs of former states of the United States of America.