So what about what are we going to do when local city/county officials vote to secede from the union ir there a rule book to follow on secession?
This is remnants of ETA and the Basque separatists movement, born in 1950 and fomented by communists.
Yes, they deserve a vote on their independence, but all of Spain needs to vote on it not just the erstwhile revolutionaries who were still assassinating people up to 2011.
When a particular region votes to secede without the whole country voting, that’s called a civil war — only it won’t be civil now and the separatists won’t win. Just as it should be.
To join the US there is a legal process spelled out and the people have to vote on the matter.
Should we spell out a legal process for leaving? Probably. But the last chance we had resulted in a major war because one side was having a hissy fit over losing an election. Democrats do not seem to change.
In the case of most of the countries of the world there was no vote. In the case of Catalonia I think france gave it to Spain. No one asked the people of Catalonia what they thought of the matter.
Now Spain is supposedly a representative form of government which means that they should allow people to vote if they want to stay or go.
The UK does it on a regular basis. Czechoslovakia voted to split and did so peacefully.
Yugoslavia did not allow such votes and ended up a mess.
In Iraq and Turkey you have the Kurds who would like their own nation but are not being allowed to vote on the matter.
Someone once said that any religion you can not peaceably leave is not a valid religion but a cult.
Perhaps the same could be applied to countries.