Secession

[cmhbob]

I probably should have tagged this on to the end of the WH Response to Texas thread, but I think secession in general bears more discussion than "Wasn't that decided 150 years ago?".

This piece is part of a paper given in 1995 at a Mises Institute conference on secession. I'm assuming the rest will be available soon.

The United Nations Charter asserts the self-determination of peoples as a fundamental human right. From this, there has developed a lively debate among international jurists about whether the right of self-determination includes a right of legitimate secession. [1] But while the concept of legitimate secession is being explored in the world at large, it forms no part of contemporary American political discourse. There was a time, however, when talk about secession was a part of American politics. Indeed, the very concept of secession and self-determination of peoples, in the form being discussed today, is largely an American invention. It is no exaggeration to say that the unique contribution of the eighteenth-century American Enlightenment to political thought is not federalism but the principle that a people, under certain conditions, have a moral right to secede from an established political authority and to govern themselves. In what follows I would like to sketch out this all-but-forgotten American political tradition.

Interesting viewpoint. Keep in mind that even old Abe himself at one time supported the idea of revolution and secession, though not in so many words.

Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so many of the territory as they inhabit.

 

[Aku]

Would love to see it happen. I think its time this country gets a political enema.

 

[Lurker66]

And replace them with other poo heads who can afford to run, no thanks.

 

[RickN]

When the collapse does come and the US breaks up, it will reform into 3 or 4 smaller countries. The only thing that will stop it is a really serious states rights agreement with the federal government going back to only those powers it was supposed to have.