Nov 5, 2004

Most Likely to Secede

by Liberty and Power

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

In my previous post on secession and the red/blue divide, I forgot to include a link to Secession.net. This is a worthy outfit whose goals include the following:

Legitimatize Secession of Small Political Entities: the United Nations and human rights organizations give lip service support to autonomy and self-determination movements; we promote factual and moral arguments for the right of individuals, communities large and small, and national sub-groups to seek independence.

Promote Nonviolent, Libertarian and Decentralist Political Visions: ones that will replace centralized, authoritarian economic-political institutions and offer concrete nonviolent strategies for achieving true peace, freedom, justice and prosperity.

Influence Existing Secessionist Movements: too many movements want to replace one big, centralized authoritarian state with two or more smaller ones. Only a worldwide movement promoting the radical goals of freedom for individuals and communities can legitimatize the aspirations of hundreds of suppressed national and regional groups for freedom.

Promote New Secession Movements: billions of people are ready for radical decentralist alternatives and secessionist strategy, they just need a firmer philosophical basis and a little encouragement to begin organizing their own movements.

Network among these Movements to coordinate nonviolent secessionist strategies and tactics.

Of course there are also many relevant articles in back issues of Formulations.

More Comments:

David Gross - 11/5/2004

I have heard some of my townsmen say, “I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico – see if I would go”; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute.

The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.…

Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves – the union between themselves and the State – and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury?