When they start to think about the actual repercussions of it, they won't go through with it. It's a lot like one of your friends (please imagine for just a moment that you have some) talking shit in a bar about how he'd totally fuck up that guy across the room who bumped into him earlier. When that other dude walks by again, it's all "Sorry. Didn't mean to get in your way."
With all due reverence, this is double-speak. 'People are saying that they want it, and so it's not going to happen'.
And you and I probably have different caliber friends. You hang out at the bar. We hang out at the range (although, they do try to drag me to the bar sometimes).
I do believe that there is a greater sense of national pride in America than Britain had of European pride.
If you'll lend me your candor for a moment: even though you can obviously make this statement in hindsight now that the British people have already voted out, can you honestly say that your perception of the British people was such that you knew an "Out" turnout was going to take place?
I'm not sure I could truly take you seriously if you said "yes" seeing as how not even the British themselves generally believed the vote would succeed. Furthermore, the Scottish have their own brand of patriotism that bucks southern Britain in almost every way, and yet they were almost united in the desire to stay within the EU, so you're reasoning confounds me somewhat.
As much of a 'we hate Yankees' and 'the South shall rise again' attitude that you see here in the South, those same people consider themselves Americans first. There's a reason why most military recruits are from Southern states and rural areas.
Of course, I've met a great deal of Southern citizens in the military. With some exceptions, they've largely echoed my feelings. And I've chosen to believe their own words. The fact that they join a military that's subject to a group of federally controlled states doesn't really contradict any feelings of state independence, however. You forget that the Revolutionary War era's Continental Military wasn't funded or regulated by a centralized arm. The colonies provided funding and motivated soldiers for the war effort individually without any congressional or presidential fiats.
You can certainly reason that the people--soldier and civilian alike--are oriented toward a union based on 150 years of precedent, but you can't necessarily say that it's something they'd choose to maintain as a matter of patriotism--or even something that they're truly comfortable with in the face of alternative enterprises. For instance, it is not at all difficult to consider fifty independent states with a series of free movement and free trade agreements, and an accompanying Continental military.
As time goes on, and Obama and friends use the government powers to force states to house aliens in the same way that the EU is forcing its prospective "United States" to accept a deluge of people from strange and hostile cultures, people are only going to get more pissed off and disillusioned with the current legal format that so happens to leave them so vulnerable. Idaho and Minnesota are already feeling the rapefugee blues just as Germany, Sweden, Britain, et al have felt for some time now. Expect attitudes to change even more as shit gets worse.
