Is this trend toward soft secession necessarily illiberal? Is the potential for creating more states or political subdivisions, even if smaller and less sclerotic, moving us further from an idealized Hoppean private community model?

The philosophy of covid passports is that people are venal and can be easily bribed and made to conform. But is this true of the people who oppose vaccine mandates? 

The Bill of Rights transformed the Constitution from one of supreme and total national power to a partially mixed polity where the liberal antinationalists at least had a fighting chance.