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Secession Is the Answer to Building a Free Society – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on January 22, 2020

It would lead to actual freedom simply due to the fact that separating from the federal government would break the current command that exists in this central power, and would for all those participating, eliminate the central authority. Without the power to use its taxing “authority” and restrictive laws, the federal government would wither and die.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/01/gary-d-barnett/secession-is-the-answer-to-building-a-free-society/

By

“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?” ~  Murray N. Rothbard (2004). “Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar’s Edition”, p.1051, Ludwig von Mises Institute

The question seemingly always raised is that the idea of true freedom sounds good, but how do we do it? What is the single plan to fix everything? Obviously, there is not one answer or any legitimate short answer to this question, and those that ask it, are usually not really interested in real freedom in the first place. In fact, most people do not want the responsibility of freedom, and that makes the government’s job easy, because as a rule, the only thing required by the state to keep the apathetic public at bay, is to offer them safety and benefits. They are happy to remain slaves, so long as they can get the things they want without much effort, and can through their proxy government, use others to gain for themselves.

But what is going to happen when this system fails, and this economy breaks down, which is imminent in my opinion? What will the people do when their welfare stops? What will they do when transportation shuts down, and fuel becomes scarce? What will they do when their money becomes worthless? What will they do when there food supply dwindles, and what will they do when there is civil unrest, riots in the streets, and widespread chaos? Waiting until the inevitable happens to take action will be too late.

The elimination of government and tyranny, a stop to all the wars of aggression, of all the murders due to those heinous wars, and an end to the slavery by the state that exists in the United States today seem impossible, but is it? The ensuing freedom that would result from an end to this governing system is almost beyond imagination, and does appear to be elusive, but what if there were a way, a way that had been tried before and had been successful? That way is secession, and is exactly what the people did in order to form this country in the first place.

So if real freedom is desired and sought, why not try secession?

Secession is simply breaking ties. This term comes from the Latin word secedere, which means to go apart. In our country, the initial breaking apart was from England and the king. When the southern states seceded, they decided due to the massive abuses of a tyrannical central government to leave that union, and become independent, as was their right to do. The secession of the southern states did not cause the Civil War, as the evil Lincoln decided to war against his own country in order to retain total control of the tyranny that was the federal government; that central government designed and created by the so-called founders. His acts of war were proof that the federal governing system created in the late eighteenth century had nothing to do with freedom, but was designed to build a centralized power that was to hold sovereignty over the states and individuals in favor of a political ruling class.

Secession today is not only viable, but also necessary in order to regain freedom for the individual. It would lead to actual freedom simply due to the fact that separating from the federal government would break the current command that exists in this central power, and would for all those participating, eliminate the central authority. Without the power to use its taxing “authority” and restrictive laws, the federal government would wither and die.

This could be done in several ways, and would not have to be a universal plan or strategy. That is part of the beauty of secession. The top down approach would begin with the states, but since many if not most of the state governments are tyrannical as well, bypassing the state governments might be a better option. But with enough support from the general population, any states that were hesitant, may feel forced to go along in order to retain some form of structure. Secession is any separation from the ruling class, so this can be done at any level. States can secede from the federal union, counties can secede from the state, cities and towns can secede from the counties, and so it goes. This can also work in reverse from a bottom up position, where the smallest entities, including individuals, could begin the secession movement.

This does not have to be nationwide in order to work. Once this process begins, the fear that will consume the federal rulers will become obvious, and as the federal system becomes more exposed, its weaknesses will also come to light. Consider the snowball effect, and know that the higher the pressure from the people, the more concessions that will be forthcoming from the central government. The only other option for the government would be violence, and that could easily cause an awakening of the rest of the common population, an awakening that would never be desired by the governing elites. This is not 1860, it is 2020, and given the technological advances in communications, and the fact that almost every citizen can be reached instantly, the advantage lies with numbers.

I do realize that this sounds not only radical, but also very far-fetched, but is it really? One of the great advantages of any secession, and at any level, is that the people would have to work together, and this alone could break the horrendous pattern of division that allows the rulers to continue to hold power and control over the masses. The division of the people was planned and implemented over a long period of time, but any solidarity would break the hold of this evil authoritarian system. Fighting amongst ourselves; democrats against republicans, black against white, all against all, can only force us to remain in a state of slavery, whereas working together builds strength, and a way to escape this fascist oligarchy where the few control everything. Isn’t secession and independence a better way?

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States Seceding from the Union : Can We? Should We ...

 

 

 

 

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American breakup: secession is much closer than we think

Posted by M. C. on December 9, 2019

The states with the most active secession movements are progressive and want to escape from a federal government they think too conservative

https://spectator.us/american-breakup/

The United States is ripe for secession. Across the world, established states have divided in two or are staring down secession movements. Great Britain became a wee bit less great with Irish independence, and now the Scots seem to be rethinking the Act of Union (1707). Czechoslovakia is no more and the former Soviet Union is just that: former. Go down the list and there are secession groups in nearly every country. And are we to think that, almost alone in the world, we’re immune from this?

Countries threaten to split apart when their people seem hopelessly divided. I’ve seen it already. Before moving to the United States, I lived in a country just as divided, without the kind of fellow feeling required to hold people together. Canada was an admirably liberal country, yet it came within a hair’s breadth of secession. America is headed the same direction today, and without the reserve and innate conservatism that has permitted Canadians to shrug off differences.

We’re less united today than we’ve been at any time since the Civil War, divided by politics, religion and culture. In all the ways that matter, save for the naked force of the law, we are already divided into two nations just as much as in 1861.The contempt for opponents, the Twitter mobs, online shaming and no-platforming, the growing tolerance of violence — it all suggests we’d be happier in separate countries.

That’s enough to make secession seem attractive. But there’s a second reason why secession beckons. We’re overlarge, one of the biggest and most populous countries in the world. Smaller countries, as I’ll show, are happier and less corrupt. They’re less inclined to throw their weight around militarily, and they’re freer. If there are advantages to bigness, the costs exceed the benefits. Bigness is badness.

It might therefore seem odd that we’ve stayed together so long. If divorces are made in Heaven, as Oscar Wilde remarked, how did we luck out? The answer, of course, is the Civil War. The example of Secession 1.0 in 1861, with its 750,000 wartime deaths, has made Secession 2.0 seem too painful to consider. In my book, American Succession, I explode the comforting belief that it couldn’t happen again. The barriers to a breakup are far lower than most people would think, and if the voters in a state were determined to leave the Union they could probably do so.

To begin with, we’re far more likely to let it happen today than we were in 1861. John Kerry had a point when he said that Putin, by invading Crimea, was behaving as if it were the 19th century. While the secretary of state was mocked for what seemed like naivety, public attitudes have in fact changed since 1861. We are now less willing to take up arms in order to maintain the Union and readier to accept a breakup instead. Next time, we’re likely to find a President James Buchanan in office and not an Abraham Lincoln.

Second, a cordial divorce might be worked out through the amending machinery of a convention held under Article V of the Constitution, if all sections of America were good and tired of each other. Secession cannot be unconstitutional when there’s a constitutional way of making it happen, through a constitutional convention.

Finally, the Supreme Court might revisit its denial of a right of secession. The originalists on the Court would recognize that the Framers had thought that states had the right to secede, while the more politically minded members of the Court might hesitate before ruling secession illegal and permitting the president to make war against a state. Instead, the Court could be expected to look northward, to the more nuanced view of secession rights taken by the Canadian Supreme Court, which rejected both an absolute right and an absolute bar to secession.

So it’s not difficult to imagine an American breakup. The reasons why a state might want to secede today are more compelling than at any time in recent history. Slavery isn’t on the ballot, and there would be no undoing of the civil rights revolution anywhere. Indeed, the states with the most active secession movements are progressive and want to escape from a federal government they think too conservative. Were secession to happen today, it would be politically correct.

So it might happen. I see us on a train, bound for a breakup. The switches that might stop us have failed, and if we want to remain united we must learn how to slow the engine. That will take things that have been in short supply lately: a greater tolerance for ideological differences, thicker skin to imagined slights, a deeper repository of confidence in and sympathy for our fellow Americans. These are things we used to have, and can learn to have again if we recognize that the alternative is secession.

Federalism used to allow for greater differences among the states, and that permitted us to sort out our differences by settling among people with like beliefs. And while federalism was discredited when it sought to excuse racist Jim Crow laws in the South, we’ve left that world long behind. That is why I propose, as a solution to our divisions and an antidote to secession, a devolution of power to the states — not mere federalism, but the alternative that the British presented to the Continental Congress in 1778 after it had decided upon secession through the Declaration of Independence. It was what Gladstone and Charles Stuart Parnell sought as an alternative to Ireland’s outright secession. The solution was ‘home rule’. Adopted in America, this would return more power to a seceding state than it possesses now, or ever possessed under American federalism.

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Mapping Europe's Secessionist Movements | Zero Hedge

 

 

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How to Avoid Civil War: Decentralization, Nullification, Secession

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2019

The FBI and CIA will go to even greater lengths to ensure the voters are never again “allowed” to elect anyone who doesn’t receive the explicit imprimatur of the American intelligence “community.”

It is true, however, that if the idea of a legally, culturally, and politically unified United States wins the day, Americans may be looking toward a future of ever greater political repression marked by increasingly common episodes of bloodshed. This is simply the logical outcome of any system where it is assumed the ruling party has a right and a duty to force the ways of the one group upon another. That is the endgame of a unified America.

https://mises.org/wire/how-avoid-civil-war-decentralization-nullification-secession?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=fe934d9513-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-fe934d9513-228343965

It’s becoming more and more apparent that the United States will not be going back to “business as usual” after Donald Trump leaves office, and it is easy to imagine that the anti-Trump parties will use their return to power as an opportunity to settle scores against the hated rubes and “deplorables” who dared attempt to oppose their betters in Washington, DC, California, and New York.

This ongoing conflict may manifest itself in the culture war through further attacks on people who take religious faith seriously, and on those who hold any social views unpopular among degreed people from major urban centers. The First Amendment will be imperiled like never before with both religious freedom and freedom of speech regarded as vehicles of “hate.” Certainly, the Second Amendment will hang by a thread.

But even more dangerous will be the deep state’s return to a vaunted position of enjoying a near-total absence of opposition from elected officials in the civilian government. The FBI and CIA will go to even greater lengths to ensure the voters are never again “allowed” to elect anyone who doesn’t receive the explicit imprimatur of the American intelligence “community.” The Fourth Amendment will be banished so that the NSA and its friends can spy on every American with impunity. The FBI and CIA will more freely combine the use of surveillance and media leaks to destroy adversaries.

Anyone who objects to the deep state’s wars on either Americans or on foreigners will be denounced as stooges of foreign powers.

These scenarios may seem overly dramatic, but the extremity of the situation is suggested by the fact that Trump — who is only a very mild opponent of the status quo — has received such hysterical opposition. After all, Trump has not dismantled the welfare state. He has not slashed — or even failed to increase — the military budget. His fights with the deep state are largely based on political issues, and not on major policy disagreements. Trump, for example, sides with the surveillance state on matters such as the prosecution of Edward Snowden.

His sins lie merely in his lack of enthusiasm for the center-left’s current drive toward ever more vicious identity politics. And, more importantly, he has been insufficiently gung ho about starting more wars, expanding NATO, and generally pushing the Russians toward World War III.

For even these minor deviations, we are told, he must be destroyed.

So, we can venture a guess as to what the agenda will look like once Trump is out of the way. It looks to be neither mild nor measured.

And then what?

In that situation, half the country — much of it from the half that calls itself “Red-State America” may regard itself as conquered, powerless, and unheard.

That’s a recipe for civil war.

The Need for Separation

But how can we take steps now to minimize this polarization the damage it is likely to cause?

The answer lies in greater decentralization and local autonomy. But as long as most Americans labor under the authoritarian notion that the United States is “one nation, indivisible” there will be no answer to the problem of one powerful region (or party) wielding unchallenged power over a minority.

Many conservatives naïvely claim that the Constitution and the “rule of law” will protect minorities in this situation. But their theories only hold water if the people making and interpreting the laws subscribe to an ideology which respects local autonomy and freedom for worldviews in conflict with the ruling class. That is increasingly not the ideology of the majority, let alone the majority of powerful judges and politicians.

Thus, for those who can manage to leave behind the flag-waving propaganda of their youths, it is increasingly evident that something other than repeating bromides about teaching high-school civics, reading the Constitution, or electing “strong leaders” will have to be done.

As I’ve noted in the past, the notion of increasing local autonomy through nullification and secession has long been gaining steam in Europe, where referendums on decentralization are growing more frequent.

And conservatives are increasingly seeing the writing on the wall. Among the more insightful of these has been Angelo Codevilla. In 2017, Codevilla, writing in the Claremont Review of Books, laid out a blueprint for local opposition to federal power and noted:

Texas passed a law that, in effect, closes down most of its abortion clinics. The U.S. Supreme Court struck it down. What if Texas closed them nonetheless? Send the Army to point guns at Texas rangers to open them? What would the federal government do if North Dakota declared itself a “Sanctuary for the Unborn” and simply banned abortion? For that matter, what is the federal government doing about the fact that, for practical purposes, its laws concerning marijuana are being ignored in Colorado and California? Utah objects to the boundaries of national monuments created by decree within its borders. What if the state ignored those boundaries? Prayer in schools? What could bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., do if any number of states decided that what the federal courts have to say about such things is bad?

Now that identity politics have replaced the politics of persuasion and blended into the art of war, statesmen should try to preserve what peace remains through mutual forbearance toward jurisdictions that ignore or act contrary to federal laws, regulations, or court orders. Blue states and red states deal differently with some matters of health, education, welfare, and police. It does no good to insist that all do all things uniformly.

And by 2019, the need for separation was becoming more urgent. Last week Codevilla continued in this line of thinking:

[A]fter the 2020 elections ordinary Americans will have to deal with the same dreadful question we faced in 2016: How do we secure and perhaps restore our fast-diminishing freedom to live as Americans? And while we may wish for help from Trump, we have to look to ourselves and to other leaders for how we may counter the ruling class’s manifold assaults now, and especially in the long term…

The logical recourse is to conserve what can be conserved, and for it to be done by, of, and for those who wish to conserve it. However much force of what kind may be required to accomplish that, the objective has to be conservation of the people and ways that wish to be conserved.

That means some kind of separation.

The rest here

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Project MKUltra: The CIA's Dally with Mind Control

 

 

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Why These Five States Would Be Better Independent Countries | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on December 1, 2019

Add New Jersey. Many of us Pennsylvanians would gladly add Philadelphia as an incentive.

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/why-these-five-states-would-be-better-independent-countries/

By Joe Jarvis

Trump scares me. But progressives terrify me.

Whoever comes next will be more extreme than Bernie Sanders.

Californians may hate Donald Trump now. But you can bet Texans will hate whoever comes next.

The federal two-party system ensures a perpetually unhappy populace. Each tries to force their will on the other when it is “their turn.”

And the rest of us, who aren’t on one side or the other, constantly lose.

This is unneeded friction. Forced unity creates far more problems than it solves.

But why put up with the swaying whims of federal politics?

In America, we have a marketplace of 50 state governments lying in wait.

I moved from Massachusetts to Florida three years ago. The taxes are lower, the living is cheaper, the laws are less restrictive, there’s little traffic, and the weather is nicer.

But that didn’t allow me to escape the shadow of Washington DC.

But imagine if we could keep the ease of moving from state to state, but without the federal government following us.

States would sink or swim on their own merits. No help from DC. And no interference either…

Plus, not a single US state would even be close to the smallest country on earth, by population or land area. Much tinier countries do just fine on their own.

California has plenty of reason to become its own country. It is the most progressive state without much in common with DC or many other states.

Californians are still being prosecuted by the feds for owning state-legal marijuana dispensaries. California wants liberal immigration policy, while the US government thinks otherwise.

It’s also the most populous state. It would be the 36th largest country on earth by population. Larger than Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Poland. Slightly smaller than Spain, Argentina, and Ukraine.

California has the 5th largest economy in the world. That’s ahead of Great Britain despite having less than 2/3 the population.

Some states are net payers of federal taxes. They pay more to the federal government than they get back.

California receives $.99 in federal expenditures for every $1.00 it pays. That means it would hardly be affected financially by divorcing the US government. Overall California would keep 1% more money in the state without federal taxes and without federal programs.

Other estimates claim it is much worse, and California only gets 70 cents back on every dollar it sends to Washington DC.

An initiative Calexit wants a 2020 ballot question to ask Californians if they want to secede from the US. Louis Marinelli is the co-author of the initiative. Here’s his take:

[C]an you think of 25 red states that might like to see blue California secede? I can think of 30 that voted for Donald Trump.

Look, the United States claims to be the freest country in the world. We ought to enjoy the fundamental right of self-determination, and if we so determine, self-rule.

Then California can sign a military base agreement with the Americans to lease land for their existing bases. California will not be hostile towards them, but our immigrants will be protected from them.

Additionally, by keeping the tens (sometimes hundreds) of billions of dollars we lose each year supporting red states that hate California, we will reduce our debts, fund our liabilities, and provide every Californian with a debt-free college education and universal healthcare.

I personally think Cali’s high taxes, restrictive regulation, and overbearing laws are ridiculous.

But who am I to tell Californians that they can’t bankrupt their state? I’d prefer to have them govern themselves, especially if that meant California voters didn’t have control over me and my affairs.

California isn’t the only state where federal taxes and aid zero out. New York and Florida are also large population states with close to even return based on what they give to DC.

Florida has millions more residents than Chile or the Netherlands.

With no income tax, it is quite attractive to work there.

Plus Florida has the 17th largest economy on Earth, topping $1 trillion GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

That’s bigger than Turkey’s economy, despite having just a quarter of the population.

At just under 21 million inhabitants, Florida would be the 58th largest country on Earth by population.

New York would be 59th by population.

With the 15th largest economy, this is slightly smaller than Spain’s economy. Meanwhile, Spain has twice the population of New York. Clearly, New York is quite capable of operating as an independent nation.

Of course, New York City alone could be its own country. And then they wouldn’t be able to dictate oppressive urban laws to rural upstate New Yorkers.

Then again, NYC wealth is redistributed to other portions of the state…

This highlights the natural friction of grouping incompatible regions under one government.

 

Texas is another large state that would do just fine on its own. As a country, it would be 51st largest by population, larger than Australia.

Texas’ GDP of $1.6 trillion is also slightly larger than each of the Australian, Russian, and South Korean economies.

The size of the economy is on par with Canada. Yet Canada has almost 9 million more residents.

Only three states receive less money per person from federal expenditures than Texas. Texas takes in the fourth smallest amount of money per capita from the federal government.

Oh, and of course there’s that little fact that Texas was once an independent country.

It became its own country, called the Republic of Texas, from 1836 until it agreed to join the United States in 1845. Sixteen years later, it seceded along with 10 other states to form the Confederacy. The Civil War forced it back into the Union, where it has stayed ever since.

New Hampshire would be a relatively small country–a little bigger than Estonia in terms of population.

But New Hampshire would also be the richest country in the world.

At least among the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. This list includes 34 of the most advanced countries like the USA, UK, Australia, Japan, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Canada, Chile, etc.

Median income, adjusted for purchasing power, even puts New Hampshire ahead of Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland.

New Hampshire is another net payer of taxes. It gets about 70 cents back on every dollar it sends to DC.

New Hampshire also has a small secession movement. One organization is called the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence. Another calls itself NHexit.

A 2014 Reuters poll showed 23.9 percent of Americans would support their state peacefully seceding from the union if necessary, while 53.3 percent opposed the idea.

Secession

This list is far from complete.

For instance, Hawaii probably has the most legitimate reason of any state to secede. They were an independent Kingdom until 1893. The USA annexed Hawaii after the monarchy was overthrown.

Native Americans are another group who have a strong historical claim to independence.

And what’s Alaska still doing as part of the United States anyway? It isn’t even attached.

Being united by force just averages the good states with the bad. It means states can’t feel the full benefit of their good policies. It means they don’t suffer the full consequences of their failures.

It means wealth is redistributed. It means power is centralized. It means individuals have less control than they would over a smaller, more local government.

Forced unity eliminates the marketplace for the government. Let the states compete, and the best policies will rise to the top.

The American people will then truly have a choice and a voice in government.

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Secession and the State – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 29, 2019

Liberalism here is classical liberalism. Before the fall.

Some might call it Paleoconservative.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/07/ludwig-von-mises/mises-on-secession/

Mises on Secession

By and

A nation, therefore, has no right to say to a province: You belong to me, I want to take you. A province consists of its inhabitants. If anybody has a right to be heard in this case it is these inhabitants. Boundary disputes should be settled by plebiscite. (Omnipotent Government, p. 90)

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 34)

Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. Whoever wants to emigrate is not held back. When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. The nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states; the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them. (Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 39–40).

The size of a states territory therefore does not matter. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 82)

The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars. (Liberalism, p. 109)

If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. (Liberalism, pp. 109–10)

The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest. (Liberalism, p. 119)

It makes no difference where the frontiers of a country are drawn. Nobody has a special material interest in enlarging the territory of the state in which he lives; nobody suffers loss if a part of this area is separated from the state. It is also immaterial whether all parts of the states territory are in direct geographical connection, or whether they are separated by a piece of land belonging to another state. It is of no economic importance whether the country has a frontage on the ocean or not. In such a world the people of every village or district could decide by plebiscite to which state they wanted to belong. (Omnipotent Government, p. 92)

From an interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe in the Austrian Economics Newsletter:

AEN: Was Mises better than the classical liberals on the question of the state?

HOPPE: Mises thought it was necessary to have an institution that suppresses those people who cannot behave appropriately in society, people who are a danger because they steal and murder. He calls this institution government.

But he has a unique idea of how government should work. To check its power, every group and every individual, if possible, must have the right to secede from the territory of the state. He called this the right of self-determination, not of nations as the League of Nations said, but of villages, districts, and groups of any size. In Liberalism and Nation, State, and Economy, he elevates secession to a central principle of classical liberalism. If it were possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, he says, it would have to be done. Thus the democratic state becomes, for Mises, a voluntary organization.

AEN: Yet you have been a strong critic of democracy.

HOPPE: Yes, as that term is usually understood. But under Mises’s unique definition of democracy, the term means self-rule or self-government in its most literal sense. All organizations in society, including government, should be the result of voluntary interactions.

In a sense you can say that Mises was a near anarchist. If he stopped short of affirming the right of individual secession, it was only because of what he regarded as technical grounds. In modern democracy, we exalt the method of majority rule as the means of electing the rulers of a compulsory monopoly of taxation.

Mises frequently made an analogy between voting and the marketplace. But he was quite aware that voting in the marketplace means voting with your own property. The weight of your vote is in accord with your value productivity. In the political arena, you do not vote with your property; you vote concerning the property of everyone, including your own. People do not have votes according to their value productivity.

AEN: Yet Mises attacks anarchism in no uncertain terms.

HOPPE: His targets here are left-utopians. He attacks their theory that man is good enough not to need an organized defense against the enemies of civilization. But this is not what the private-property anarchist believes. Of course, murderers and thieves exist. There needs to be an institution that keeps these people at bay. Mises calls this institution government, while people who want no state at all point out that all essential defensive services can be better performed by firms in the market. We can call these firms government if we want to.

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How Secession from the Soviet Union Created Booming Economies and Innovative Government | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on January 1, 2019

Just a recent historical example to consider, as the political divide seems to grow in the United States.

Ironically, the classic Cold War villain, the USSR, gives one of the best contemporary examples of peaceful secession.

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/how-secession-from-the-soviet-union-created-booming-economies-and-innovative-government/

By Joe Jarvis

On August 23, 1989, two million Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians joined hands to form a human chain almost 400 miles long.

The chain stretched from the Estonian capital of Tallinn, through Latvia, and to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.

This show of both unity among the Baltic states and resistance to the Soviet Empire cemented their fate.

Gorbachev’s government privately concluded that the Baltics’ secession from the USSR was inevitable.

In 1990, the Baltics each officially declared their independence.

One year later, the Soviet Union officially recognized their independence and the last Russian troops withdrew in 1994. Read the rest of this entry »

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Why Liechtenstein Works: Self-Determination and Market Governance | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 30, 2018

https://mises.org/wire/why-liechtenstein-works-self-determination-and-market-governance

Before we jump in, let’s have a show of hands. How many of you have ever been told that your conception of liberty sounds good in theory, on paper, but could never work in practice? How many of you have ever been called utopians? Good, I see this is most of you.

Well I am here to dispel this notion and to show all of you that you are nothing if not realists. After all the word utopia comes from the Greek words Ou and Topos. Ou means Not and Topos means Place. Utopia therefore literally means, “not a place.” In other words, those who call us utopians believe that our ideas have not been and cannot be implemented in any physical space in the real world.

I am about to tell you about a place where fundamental libertarian pillars of self-ownership and private property are never violated, a place of almost absolute, maximum individual liberty. A place where state coercion is nonexistent, or actually, as I will later argue, a place where there might be no state at all… Read the rest of this entry »

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Video: Why Secession is the Only Peaceful Path Forward for the USA | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on November 25, 2018

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/why-secession-is-the-only-peaceful-path-forward-for-the-usa/

By Joe Jarvis

Here we are forcing 320 million people to “get along.” But we’re not getting along. And we’re not going to get along. And we should just go our separate ways, and that will allow us to get along…

We’ll get along better when we go our separate ways. It will be more peaceful when we’re not at each other’s throats trying to force our agenda. That’s why we need secession.

And all we basically need for that is to make sure that the federal government doesn’t come in guns blazing and say, “Nope. You’re gonna fund us whether you like it or not.”

I hope that in this day and age if there was popular support, they wouldn’t be able to do that.

And there is something to suggest that they wouldn’t react violently…

In this video, I go into why the political climate would be better if states seceded. Competition between the states would give us real options to shop around for the best government. By voting with our feet, we could actually hold power over what kind of government we want… moving to a new state is easier than moving to a new country.

I give plenty of examples of the benefits of government competition, as well as when and where secession worked…

Be seeing you

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No Matter How You Vote, The New Congress Won’t Represent You | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2018

For centuries, this myth of representation has served to quash opposition to government abuse, and to bolster claims that submission to government is “voluntary.” It’s time to abandon the myths.

https://mises.org/wire/no-matter-how-you-vote-new-congress-wont-represent-you

…Two Ways Representation Doesn’t Work

Specifically, there are two ways that real-world political representation doesn’t fit the popular notions of how it all works.

First of all, even if a politician wanted to faithfully represent the people within his constituency, this would be impossible. It is impossible because the politicians can’t know the views of the whole population within his constituency. And it’s impossible because the more diverse a constituency becomes, the more unlikely it is that any legislation can be crafted to serve the interests of everyone.

Secondly, we must not fall into the trap of assuming that political representatives even try to respond to the policy desires of the district voters. The idea that government coercion is made legitimate through political representation leans heavily on the idea that politicians adhere to a delegate model of political representation in which they try to advance or protect the interests of their constituents. Unfortunately, this is a bad assumption.

The Impossibility of Representing “the People”

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Nullification and Secession: Solutions or Talking Points? | Abbeville Institute

Posted by M. C. on September 5, 2018

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/nullification-and-secession-solutions-or-talking-points/

By 

Many of us in the South have maintained our faith in the Constitutional right of nullification and secession despite the efforts of massed, bloody, Yankee bayonets. But is the talk about nullification and secession an earnest effort to put forward solutions to an out of control, Deep State, supreme federal government or is it merely an exercise in heady political calisthenics?

I belong to the tribe that believes nullification and secession are the only real solutions to the current out of control supreme federal government. To demonstrate the validity of my belief, I will pose and answer three fundamental questions: (1) Are the concepts of state nullification and secession legitimate American political principles? (2) Is the current supreme federal government a legitimate governing authority? and (3) Would the modern-day acceptance of state nullification and secession be so unworkable that it would destroy the United States?…

Even the High Federalist Alexander Hamilton was forced to admit that the Sovereign States had the right to protect their citizens from an abusive federal government: Read the rest of this entry »

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