When I attended the Abbeville Institute’s Secession Conference in Dallas back in November 2018, most people I know in “normal” life thought, “Sure, she’s a nice gal and all, but man, does she have some wacky ideas!” Well, I don’t think anyone’s rolling their eyes anymore.
In liberty parlance, secession simply means the humane act of severing political ties to which one has acceded. Instead of fighting over the keys to the kingdom, as is the case in a centralized mass democracy, secessionists simply say, “We don’t want a king. We’d rather manage our lives through smaller-scale, more localized governance.”
But really, the “king” analogy doesn’t quite work in critiquing the modern state. Even “the medieval king did not have sovereign power over individuals in his territory” the way the empire wields its unchecked power today, explains Abbeville co-founder and president Dr. Don Livingston.
“He had to share that power with a number of independent social authorities,” like the nobility, principalities, and the church, from whom the king had to get consent for rule within his realm. “Not even an absolute monarchy in the 17th century … could impose an income tax, or create a public debt, or order universal conscription of troops.”
What makes the modern state different from its ancient and medieval counterparts is its immensity in both size (territory) and scale (population), as well as the fact that it too has social authorities, but they are very much dependent institutions, requiring state authorization. This is how we get to the point of governments shutting down churches as “nonessential” and cops enforcing those absurd edicts. Centralized powers don’t like competition.
“If bigness invites rule by dictator, dictators also like bigness,” wrote law professor F.H. Buckley in his book American Secession. “With greater size comes grander palaces and more power to push neighbors around” since “big states are more corrupt … there’s a greater sense of solidarity in smaller states, such as Finland, where people are less diverse and more trusting of others.”
Americans used to understand this, as new states were born through secession and the Founders’ understanding that republics must be small in order to work. For instance, Kentucky was carved out of Virginia, Tennessee out of North Carolina, and Maine out of Massachusetts.
During its federal flourishing, the US was known as the “mother of new nations.” Like the cantons of Switzerland, divisions of land, size and scope, representation, and diverse populations helped check consolidation of power, as well as promote culture, homogeneity, and liberty.
As the Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken explains, “If American federalism were like Swiss federalism, there would be 1,300 states.” Sure, there aren’t that many now, but that doesn’t mean that states or regions or peoples can’t create their own “empires of liberty” very soon.
The War of Northern Aggression dealt a huge blow to America’s decentralist tradition, but the kicker was a reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment some 50 years after its ratification, when Progressive-Era schemers began to claim the wording of this “Civil War amendment” codified federal supremacy, giving us such gems as the income tax, prohibition, the draft, and every welfare-warfare program to come along since the New Deal.
Known as Incorporation Doctrine, it’s a political bludgeon that empowers the bureaucrats and oligarchs, destroys community and culture, increases violence, atomization, and displacement, and decreases mutual benefit, comity, and trust. Simply put, centralization is “antithetical to virtue,” as law professor Allen Mendenhall says.
“Larger states, far from providing peace, merely provide larger wars, having more human and material resources to pour into them,” wrote Sale. Smaller states can band together to make “temporary confederation and mutual defense … in the form of treaties and leagues and alliances.”
Just as the 13 Southern states formed the Confederate States of America to resist “large-scale aggression,” states like Rhode Island, Maine, and Florida, and even counties like Graham, NC, have in recent days been guarding their borders from out-of-town interlopers. The senate in Pennsylvania partially lifted the lockdown in their state, overriding the governor’s one-size-fits-all virus measures, and approved a bill giving county governments even more leeway in implementing their own community-specific “reopen” plans.
Like many other states, the citizens of Michigan are co-opting the chaos and banding together to resist their governor’s extreme shut-down laws, asking why the whole of a largely suburban and rural state must live under Detroit-specific laws. So far, four county sheriffs are vowing not to enforce the emergency orders of the governor, who was aghast that some protesters waved the Confederate Battle Flag. Turns out some of them Michiganders have a clue.
Governors on the east and west coasts are creating regional pacts, dare I say, “confederations,” to work together in reopening their states. Hell, Gavin Newsom declared California a “nation-state.”
When a Bloomberg Opinion writer states that “Federalism has always had rough spots, but conflict is rising and resolutions are not” so “nullification … could be ripe for a come back,” or the New York Times defends states’ rights, or Reuters pushes for the “Great American Breakup,” or a contributing editor at The New Republic calls for “separating blue states from America,” you know we’re on the precipice of something revolutionary. Centralization is under threat, and it’s about damn time.
Funny thing is, it’s the ideology of a “republic, one and indivisible” that has propelled us to this current historical moment. After all, it’s not the quarantine that is separating us or causing a lack of “national” solidarity. It’s that there is nothing that really unites “us,” other than division.
A good testimony to this is lockdown communities in Italy “singing in solidarity.” These quarantined people could be heard spontaneously crooning traditional Italian ballads and the country’s national anthem – an illustration of a people, a shared heritage, and a lived culture. It was a hard sell in NYC, and when it did catch on, well, we got Bon Jovi.
America is too big and too diverse to be a “nation.” We’re a disparate patchwork, cobbled together by secular fictions, utopian fantasies, covetousness, and hubris. We’re a centralized managerial state – a geographic and geopolitical blob that has only grown, but can never shrink. Till now.
Forcible political unification has a way of ruining a people and wrecking a civilization. From the centralizing force resulting from the War Between the States to the community-killing coercive measures of equality, heterogeneity, mass democracy, legal plunder, and “acquired rights,” it’s apparent to anyone with eyeballs that diversity is not our strength. And the havoc wreaked by coronavirus has only magnified this inescapable truth.
In a pre-pandemic interview, economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe remarked that because “political and monetary centralization has proceeded unabated … a severe economic meltdown is in the making.” Bear in mind, he said this before our $6 trillion COVID-19 “stimulus” and “recovery” packages.
Now, combine that with the fact that “most Western countries have been thoroughly dehomogenized by immigration policies favoring multiculturalism,” which has “massively increased as a fallout of endless US wars and military adventures,” and it’s no wonder that smart people are embracing decentralization and localism. Finally!
Recently, Buckley wrote that coronavirus could hasten secession. “Since Donald Trump’s election, a poison has entered America’s soul. It’s driven us apart and made the idea of a breakup more inviting.”
Really though, coronavirus has made unavoidable the “explosive mixture” of which post-modern America is made. Trump’s win was just the “beginning of the great push back,” as I’ve heard Mises president Jeff Deist say. Trump simply brought to center stage the division that had already been festering and coming to a head for 150 years. Thanks to pandemic-mania, it’s about to pop.
Globalism is just centralization on a mass scale. An outgrowth of modern imperial hegemony, it’s one giant liberty-sucking, money-stealing, war-starting parasite.
Interestingly, it’s the globalists – the one-world elites, technocrats, career politicians, crony capitalists, multinational corporate kings, and billionaire social-engineers – who are running scared these days. So, don’t fear their rhetoric.
“Will the coronavirus end globalization?” they ask. It’s a “gift to nativist nationalists and protectionists” and a “gift to nationalists” and could “boost protectionism,” warn the very people who assured us there was no danger (economic, cultural, and physical) to offshoring every damned thing. When fellows at the “Centre for International Governance Innovation” (yikes!) are triggered because globalism failed and nationalism is on the ascent, this is good news.
When Henry Kissinger is shaking in his bureaucratic boots that the coronavirus crisis is threatening “the principles of the liberal world order” … and “the world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values,” people should rejoice. The “cracks in globalization” are on full display. Its comfortable fiefdoms are threatened now by reality.
For instance, Trump has already de-funded the WHO, which explicitly advised against travel restrictions, criticized countries that implemented travel bans, and lectured the world that “viruses know no borders.” Many countries ignored the advice, thankfully, grasping the fact that borders are a line of defense against invasion, whether viral or human. More and more people are realizing that the “global village” was a ruse.
Anti-EU sentiment is on the march in Europe. Countries like Italy are wanting to secede from the pan-continental institution. COVID-19 “shatters the facade of the EU.” European leaders warn that the virus could “breakup” their carefully crafted ruling class. The nations of Europe are “rising up” and demanding their sovereignty back.
When the ironically named The Nation sees “traditionalism” as fascistic and fears that the “obscure yet powerful ideology” may fill this watershed moment, you know things are looking up for secessionists, small-government advocates, and down-home conservative folk. The leftist losers are losing their minds, y’all.
Localism isn’t perfect, but it’s much less likely to create wars and other social discord, and when it does, they are much less frequent and typically smaller, shorter, more manageable affairs. Like Jeff Deist rightly explains, “All crises are local.”
My late friend Matthew Silber designed the graphic at top. It speaks to the idea that secession is for everyone, but centralization puts up road blocks to obscure the big picture: that it’s the oligarchs (the managerial deep state and the globalists) vs. citizens. They want us to feel exploited so we demand a government fix to every problem. They want us to spend our resources, time, and energy lobbying for a piece of the pie so that centralization itself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When I saw Marcus Ruiz Evans, founder of CalExit, speak at the Dallas conference, he commented, “America doesn’t represent California values.” The room full of Southern-without-apology stalwarts agreed, but nor does California represent Southern values and tradition. Nor do big cities speak for rural areas. Or country folks speak for urban ethnic enclaves. Multiculturalism is anathema to happy, healthy people in a centralized state, but it just fine and dandy in a confederation born of peaceful separation.
Evans knows that diversity by force only feeds the beast and creates aggrievement as an identity. Wouldn’t it be better to voluntarily associate with like-minded people and create independent institutions and high-trust communities that foster your beliefs while simultaneously deterring the Leviathan?
Who wants fake, feckless unity when you can have the real thing? Why not nurture a human-scale social order that has produced flourishing throughout the ages? Let’s actually know and help our neighbors and build up local bonds, instead of begging for scraps in a system whose aim is to tear us all down.
The illusion that we’ve ever in our lifetimes been “a free people” is starting to sink in with those who had bought into the big lie that bigger is better. Let’s recalibrate, prioritize, break our bad habits, and reorganize. We have been blessed with a reset button, so now’s the time to press on with a much-overdue and highly necessary course correction. Secession is the answer.
Let’s work to turn the “ratchet effect” on its freakin’ head. Let it be us, normal, everyday people, who do not let this crisis go to waste.
Comments
Another brilliant piece. I think the Kung Flu has shown that Emperor Modern State is wearing no clothes. It is time to escort the naked old fool to the retirement home of bad ideas and reclaim our local roots. Small is indeed beautiful.
Thanks, William. This small-scale thing isn’t going to be as easy a sell as we would hope, despite all of what you and I say and know, but still, we must keep at it, keep awakening people to small as an option, keep reminding people that the empire hates them, and keep on building bridges with people who have a clue. Keep on fighting the good fight, brother.
Another goodun’, DM!
My wife has observed recently that it’s those without God who fear this pandemic most, and are likeliest to demand/beg for ever more and bigger government to come to their rescue. Whether they’ll acknowledge it or not, their god and his creeds are found in government, law and endless litigation, etc., all in the endless effort to achieve utopian perfection. The destruction of The Tower of Babel (TOB), by God Himself in an act of severe mercy upon our ancient forefathers, may be several millennia in the past, but the hubristic impulse that led them to attempt its construction, has continued unabated. The resulting scattering of our ancestors was part of that mercy, and while the reunification of humanity is a goal, it will only be achieved through King Jesus, who alone can achieve both unity and diversity, in perfect balance.
Localism [then] isn’t perfect, but it’s much less likely to create wars and other social discord, and when it does, they are much less frequent and typically smaller, shorter, more manageable affairs.
Amen! Further, knowing our telos is in the hands of a loving, Heavenly Father, who works all things together for His glory and our good, even when our inevitable imperfections as redeemed sinners-saints emerge, we won’t be thrown into ultimate despair, and be tempted to tyrannize our neighbour in order to achieve our version of TOB, albeit a “Christianized” one. We get limits! We can moderate our expectations!
So many great points, DD. The “perfect balance” of unity and diversity that God offers is indeed the goal. It cannot be replicated through a large-scale state and without Him. America has heart issues, as you mention with tyrannizing our neighbors, and it needs surgery big time. I pray that secession is the remedy people seek.
I really enjoyed this article. It conveys ideas and concepts like none other. Nowhere else have I ever met such thought-provoking material. Will a monstrous,aggressive,omnipotent,highly-centralized,imperialist and imperialistic governing power ever allow its own dissolution or dismantlement or destruction ? Oh Heavens – NO ! And,overwhelming numbers of Americans are now firmly “wedded” to the central government from which ” all blessings flow ” – in the form of welfare cheques,general support,manifold social-assistance schemes,promotion and preferment and all the present prospects for yet further “goodies”,in the form of reparation-payments,guaranteed annual minimum income,universal medical coverage,etc.,all to be paid for by those honest,responsible and productive USA citizens who are still left to pay taxes and to play the part of ” the keystone in the arch ” .
Consulting USA History does not seem to support any expectation or hope that any kind of secession movement would ever meet with anything at all in the way of success. Attempts at secession failed totally in the 1830’s and the 1840’s,and also in the great Civil War Era of the 1860’s . In the ” Whiskey Rebellion ” of the late 18 th Century,George Washington in person led troops and armies to suppress what was an extremely popular,just and factually-justifiable popular movement against a whole list of social wrongs and legal malfeasance.
Secession in the USA is,I believe,unlikely,and would be vigourously opposed by all those forces and agencies at the command of Centralized Government.
But – I enjoyed reading your article. To encourage you in your good work,I today have made to you a donation of USD $ 20.00 .
I truly appreciate your generous donation, good sir. I will spend it wisely, as is NOT the American way. 😉
As far as secession goes, I think it may be coming precisely because of what you say. When those who have been pulling the cart for so, so long, “those honest, responsible and productive USA citizens,” can no longer subsidize the Leviathan either because they have lost their jobs or there is no one there to help them (I mean, who advocates for white, middle-class, straight, Christian folk? No one!), this will start the ball rolling. You already see it with the reopen movements, with people saying that they’re racist protests because white people aren’t “disproportionately affected” by the virus and that white folks (the lion’s share of small biz owners) only care about their bank accounts. Well, when these evil racists’ bank accounts are dry, there will be no well from which to draw. Tribalism will be the reality when Big Daddy Government isn’t there to diaper people’s butts.
As you eluded, though, Muricans are a fat, lazy, selfish, sinful bunch, of whom I am first. But perhaps it is precisely that socially engineered mindset that will help be the straw to break the camel’s back. You can bet your bottom dollar that when my husband gets canned and replaced with a low-skill, low-pay H-1B foreigner, my ass is getting in that “gibs me” cart. We won’t get much and for long, but it, along with record numbers of newly unemployed, will help break the system once and for all. And printing money can only band-aid the problem for so long.
One of us will be right … or like Hoppe says, we’ll get civil war or a strong man. Only time will tell.
Well, secession did work when we seceded from the British Empire, something doubtless all the pundits of that day would have thought impossible. So, too, did the splitting up of the Soviet Union more recently.
And I admit, the forces of potential secession are likely not ready, nor perhaps even fully aware of who they are . . . yet!
But on the other side of this, lest anyone think our “masters of the universe” hold all the cards, the problem is this: the empire’s very size and especially diversity and complexity, make it the very devil to control. Yes, we face very real challenges from many who have grown fat, happy and complacent, not to mention the many Third Worlders the empire has imported, who want bigger and bigger government. But there still exists a sizable number who fundamentally don’t cotton to this sort of thing, even if they don’t have a solid understanding of Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, John Taylor of Caroline, or John C. Calhoun, or even the differences/similarities among Classic Liberalism, Paleo-Conservatism, Federalism, or any other “ism”.
None of us are prophets, but when you see the beginning of the breakdown of, say, the food system, dependent as it is on a relative few monopolizing BigAg players, who, along with their political cronies and self-serving bureaucracies (what I call the corporatocracy), are unable to fulfill the progressive promise of cheap food, delivered in a timely fashion (or delivered at all), then folks, of whatever understanding or political stripe, are likely going to take things into their and their natural communites’ own hands. This might look like localities banding together and wholly ignoring asinine government regulations on home produced meat and dairy, fruits and vegetables, all supposedly for food safety, but really only protecting the power and profits of the ruling classes! Heck, this might even see the rebirth of some version of the family farm, not as some romantic, Currier & Ives version, but for practical purposes. Because . . . .
. . . . Bubba’s gotta feed his family, and the temperament of a good many of the folks in flyover country, and especially here in the South, still hearkens back to the independent mindedness of their ancestors, even if they (we) are currently relatively fat and happy.
Great points!! Necessity is the mother of invention (or innovation and getting back to roots, as will be the case for us), right?! Bubba’s gotta feed his family … love it!
And to piggyback off of what you mentioned about the USSR, Dr. Livingston just sent me an email and here’s what he says about that: “I first took up the topic of secession after the USSR peacefully dissolved through secession–not violence and revolution. This is something Americans do not appreciate. Hardly anyone was thinking about the topic prior to the Soviet breakup. I remember how nervous people were when the topic came up–not so today. Perhaps we can talk about that change in people’s minds about secession from a term that means anarchy (Lincoln said so explicitly in the 1st inaugural) to a neutral act to be judged on its merits.”
God bless Dr. Livingston!
Man, even Tom Woods is openly calling for secession in his recent interview with Jeff Deist. Woo hoo!! https://youtu.be/GYj23Atbw20?t=883
BTW, Happy Easter, DM, to you and yours!
The tomb’s empty! He is risen!
Thank you, DD, and same to you and your family. Indeed He is risen!
O Christ, great and most holy Pascha.
O Wisdom, Word and Power of God,
grant that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the never-ending day of Thy kingdom
(Ninth Ode, Paschal Canon)
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Quote: Just as the 11 Southern states formed the Confederate States of America to resist “large-scale aggression,”
It was actually 13.
I was born in coastal Mississippi and grew up in East Tennessee. Currently I live in Missouri and have familiarized myself with it’s history and geography. While it’s definitely not the South, it was very much a part of the Confederacy, as a regular reader of Abbeville should know.
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/christian-persecution-in-missouri/
I’ve read about half that book. It’s amazing how it parallels our own times.
AM, I saw this in my “Disqus notifications” a few days ago but not on this page here, and assumed you had deleted it for some reason since I was unable reply. Turns out I had to “approve” it. Not sure why, maybe the Abbeville link?? Strange. But anyway, here it is, better late, than never. Sorry about that.
Yes, you are correct, and I made the correction in the post. Wanna be my editor? Lawd, I could use one, considering that my husband and I read my posts a gazillion times before AND after publishing, and STILL find mistakes. It’s unnerving. Thus, I appreciate my readers keeping me on my toes, so thanks!
Interesting that you share that Lewis Liberman piece. “Lewis,” aka Matthew Silber, was a good friend of mine – a real kindred spirit. And when he passed, I wrote this article/eulogy about him.
http://www.dissidentmama.net/my-brother-in-arms/
He was the guy who started to awaken me to the more western theaters of the War and the battles like Pea Ridge. We Virginians/Carolinians can get so wrapped up in the history that happened around here that we often are remiss in giving due to the other regions of the War. I recently read the book “Rifles For Watie” with my kids, and it so profoundly discusses this Missouri/Kentucky struggles of which you speak from a historical-fiction perspective. Such an amazing book!
Anyhoo, thanks for commenting, and I do apologize for the error. Stay tough out there in Mizzou and here are those ***13*** stars flying high and proud for ya!
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Thank you for the article. We’ve written extensively on this. We believe that the only way to preserve traditional values and liberty on this continent is secession. Visit us at https://redstatesecession.org/
Thank YOU, sir/sirs or maybe a ma’am! 🙂 I just checked out your site – quite impressive. There can never be too many pro-secession advocates around. Good for you, even if y’all are from the “Yankee Midwest,” lol. Would you be interested in a podcast interview some time down the road? I just launched my podcast and am trying to talk with red-pilled movers and shakers. Food for thought. Keep up the good fight!!
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