Looks like silly reddit-bait to me, and if you didn't take it seriously, why'd you post it? Who are the bozos who voted this up, anyway?:-)

Dumb? It looks like a 4th grader's homework assignment to identify the 5 regions of the US and he clearly got an F.

Yeah, it looks pretty dumb.

On a somewhat related note, if we folded the federal government and signed a free-trade and migration pact between the 50 states, would we miss anything?

Well there are economies of scale when you only have to maintain one standing army rather than 50 separate ones.

Likewise, there are large-scale benefits to having a cross-country highway system, even if it goes through states that couldn't afford it on their own.

Actually, you only need 2, one for each coast. The Founding Fathers did not approve of expeditionary warfare.

As much as I love me some Founding Fathers, when they lived, 40 minutes got you a few miles away if you traveled with all available speed. Today, the other side of the world is only 40 minutes away on a ballistic trajectory. (And I'm not even counting information warfare where it's less than a second away.)

> The Founding Fathers did not approve of expeditionary warfare.

I don't know that that's necessarily the case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War

And Texas would start invading everybody. :-)

Illinois would miss the existence of feds to investigate corruption like Blagojevich the state is incapable of self-policing.

I think that was just like a shock tactic to really get people's attention at the presentation. It might be more of good presenting (start with a bang so people will be interested) than actually taking delight in America dying to that extent.

(That said, some of his comments make it seem that maybe that is why he made the map.)

Based on his anything I don't know why anyone is taking him seriously... but I suspect it's because people love to be entertained.