That can be answered by another question. Do you believe that this Nation/union will last forever?
If it does it will be the first one to ever do so in History. All previous "Unions" in history have failed and dissolved. The Greek, The Persian, The Egyptian, The Babylonia, even the British Empire, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, and all others have reached a point when they (the Union which were held together by a variety of measures and threats) fell apart. Even the E.U. is in trouble. Yet the individual states that made up these union for the most part seemed to have survived some even to this day.
This Union, called the United States, will be no different. We are fast following the same path which destroyed the USSR, which is bankruptcy. When that collapse happens, and it will, then it will be the individual states which will band together into new unions (plural) for their own protection. That is the "sacredness" of the State. It is that they are the basic building blocks of this nation and the final recourse when this nation fails. And it will historically fail at some point in the future. And it may be closer than we think if our currency and credit as a nation does collapse. That will reshape this nation and it will be the stronger states that the others will rally around and that will rebuild not a single nation but several new nations out of that rubble. That has been the course of past history.