UPDATED AND REVISED JULY 2019

The United States is coming apart at the seams. Hostilities between the parties to the national debate, substantially over the proper role of the federal government, are largely verbal rather than violent, but so they were before Fort Sumter was fired upon. The national debate is growing increasingly hostile, and a second Civil War at some time in our future cannot be ruled out.

We are no longer united as a people, but rather are divided into two warring camps, labeled roughly as Democrats and Republicans. We are dispersed throughout the land, it is true, but we also are clustered by region, as clearly shown by the Presidential election results of the early 21st Century, and by the map on the cover of this book. It is time to consider the possibility that these united states should be untied, in order that we may live as civil neighbors, rather than fractiously under one roof pretending to be a family.

There is another divide in the country that has not been bridged, in spite of many efforts, and that many say is growing deeper and wider. The legacy of slavery and racism and segregation has left many (though certainly not all, and perhaps not most) African-Americans disaffected and unhappy with the country in which they find themselves. The reparations proposal presented in this book may provide the means for voluntary separation of these reluctant citizens into a new land of true self-determination. It is a dramatic and even drastic proposal, to be sure, but a wound that never heals eventually is fatal.