Secession Is in Our Future?
14. May, 2009 
17 Comments
by Clifford F. Thies, Mises.org
Can states secede? There are three levels on which this question can be answered:
- the inalienable right of secession,
- the international law of secession, and
- the US law of secession.All three say yes.
The Inalienable Right of Secession
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America invokes the self-evident truths that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that governments are formed to protect these rights and gain their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when a government becomes abusive of these rights, it is the right — no, it is the duty — of the people to alter or abolish that government.
To say governments were formed to protect the rights of men would be historically incorrect. Almost all governments were formed by ruthless men exerting their will over others through the use of force. Some governments, over time, evolved toward the rule of law, perhaps only because their rulers saw that this would sanction their own continued enjoyment of the wealth that they possessed. In some instances, this evolution involved one or more “revolutions” in which those who were governed were able to better establish the rule of law.
The language of the Declaration should not be construed as an argument about the historical origins of government but, rather, as what would be true and just to an enlightened person, namely, that as persons and as communities of persons, we have the right and the duty to alter or abolish governments that become abusive of our rights. As Benjamin Franklin once put it, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
The concept of an inalienable right of secession was not original to the American Revolution. It can be traced to the scholastics, to Reformation politics, and to the most ancient Greek and Hebrew writings. Without going into a dissertation on the subject, let me simply point to the flag of the state of Virginia, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. It depicts a female warrior (Athena) standing atop a slain tyrant (Zeus).
According to legend, Zeus, the greatest and most terrible of the gods, was supposed to be the god of law, yet he was himself lawless. When he heard that he would sire a child who would destroy him, he swallowed his wife whole to prevent it. But the child grew within him and then burst from him fully grown. This child was Athena, the goddess of victory, liberty, and peace. And, she did indeed slay her father. It should be easy to see, in this legend, how the rule of law might be established from a government formed through the use of force.
Now, does a massive increase in taxes, in spending, and in the federal deficit constitute such an abuse of the rights of men as to justify secession under the doctrine of an inherent right to secede? I don’t think so. Ask me about the inherent right to secede when the government starts to restrict our freedom of speech, to shut down the independent media, to confiscate our guns, and to take away our children.
The International Law of Secession
The international law of secession is in the process of emerging at this very time. The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights indicates that all people have the right to a country. A corollary of this is that no people should long be kept in nationless status, e.g., the Palestinians. A further corollary of this is that no people should long be kept in any subjugated status, such as by being citizens or subjects of a country from which they are alienated.
Now, as a practical matter, consideration has to be given to whether an identifiable people exist in an identifiable place. At least, this is the current thinking. But, if these several elements come together: an identifiable people in an identifiable place that grouse under the subjugation of the larger nation, there is a growing consensus that this people and place can be severed from the larger nation, even by rebellion and with support from outside the larger nation. East Timor, Eritrea, and the devolutions of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (including the ongoing situation in Kosovo) illustrate the development of the international law of secession.
Turning to the United States, it is now well established that the country consists of so many “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democrat) states, along with a few “purple” (battleground) states. Even in a so-called landslide, like 2008, only a few states “flip” from Republican to Democrat, and these states go from close Republican to close Democrat. Furthermore, the whole purpose of elections has become to decide whether Democrats get to raise taxes on Republicans while adjusting the Alternative Minimum Tax so as to minimize the impact on themselves, and whether Democrats get to force acceptance of gay marriage onto Republicans or whether Republicans get to force unwanted pregnancies onto Democrats. In other words, there no longer is any pretense of federalism in which domestic policy is left to the states of the Union.
Under these conditions, it can be argued that, were either party to fall into permanent minority status, and the other party to establish hegemonic control over the so-called federal government, the people in the other party could be said to be an alienated, identifiable people in an identifiable place, and could assert a right to secede under emerging international law.
The argument for secession under emerging international law might be strongest for Alaska. Geographically, the place is disjoint from the other states of the Union, making it an identifiable place. Furthermore, under their state constitution’s explicit right of privacy, possession of small amounts of marijuana is a right; yet, the so-called federal government imposes the costs of its war on drugs onto the citizens of Alaska.
Furthermore, the people of Alaska have been long frustrated in developing their natural resources because of the opposition by majorities in the “lower 48.” Indeed, as a separate nation, Alaska might be the freest place in the world, with zero taxes because of its wealth in natural resources, well-established civil liberties, and a socially tolerant, live-and-let-live attitude among its people.
Following Alaska, states such as Florida and Texas would have the next best arguments for secession under international law, since they are themselves on a seacoast and their secession would not much disrupt the road, transmission wire, pipeline or other infrastructure networks of the other states.
States such as Utah and Kentucky, being landlocked “enclaves,” would have a relatively weak argument. On the other hand, it would be relatively easy for these states to join with other states that have already seceded or are in the process of seceding, and form a patchwork of independent republics that develop compacts to facilitate interstate travel, commerce, water flow, transmission of electricity, and so forth.
US Law of Secession
The US law of secession is thought to have been decided by the US Supreme Court in White v. Texas, following the Civil War. The actual matter to be decided was relatively insignificant. The Court used the occasion to issue a very broad decision. Chief Justice Chase, speaking for the Court, said,
The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.
Notice that the second sentence appears to totally contradict the first sentence.
The first sentence I just quoted invokes words such as “perpetual,” and in so doing may create the impression that the Supreme Court decreed that no state could ever secede from the Union. But, on careful reading, the relationship between Texas and the other states of the Union is merely “as indissoluble as the union between the original States.” In other words, Texas, having been a nonoriginal state, has no greater right of secession than do the original states. As to how states might secede, the second sentence says, “through revolution or through consent of the States.”
As to why a state might secede, either through revolution or through consent, Chief Justice Chase presciently discusses the 9th and 10th Amendments to the US Constitution, which reserve to the states and to the people thereof all powers not expressly granted to the federal government, and that the design of the Union, implicit in the very name “United States,” is the preservation of the states as well as of the Union:
the preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their governments, are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National government.
The so-called United States of America ceases to exist when the political majority of the country attempts to rule the entire country as a nation instead of as a federal government. In such a circumstance, the “indestructible union of indestructible states” of which the Court speaks is already dissolved.
As to whether “Texas” continued as a state and, furthermore, as a state of the United States during the period of rebellion, the Court made clear that it continued as both although certain rights that normally accrue to states of the United States fell into suspension. Presumably, if Texas had seceded “with the consent of the States,” Texas would have been able to free itself from the Union described as the “United States,” and could have considered joining into another Union described as the “Confederate States.”
Also presumably, if the Confederate States of America had been able to impose their will onto the other states of the United States through force or had been able to induce the other states to consent, Texas and the other states of the Confederate States could have seceded from one Union and joined into another. But, the outcomes of wars are problematic.
How Do “the States” Consent to Secession?
The wide-ranging discussion of the Court in White v. Texas contains a lot of intriguing and obtuse comments. How, for example, do “the States” give consent to the secession of a state? The Constitution, as the Court says, does not envision such a thing, and does not provide a process. What if the legislatures of “the States” sent delegates to a convention that drafted a constitution for a more perfect union, which would take effect for those states that ratified it, providing that at least a two-thirds majority of them did so? For those who were not homeschooled, it may be necessary to point out that this was the process through which the Constitution of 1789 was created and through which eleven states seceded from the union provided by the Articles of Confederation, leaving Rhode Island and North Carolina as the only two states in that prior union. (Those two states eventually also seceded from the prior union, thereupon making it a nullity, and joined into the new union.)
While the Constitution of 1789 required the secession of 9 out of 13 states, does this mean that a supermajority of the states would be necessary for consent? It seems to me that a supermajority would not be necessary, but only a simple majority, for a US version of what is called the “Velvet Revolution” in the former Czechoslovakia, now the Czech and Slovak Republics. In that country, dissolution involved nothing more earth shattering than a bunch of accountants who scurried about the country, totting up the value of the assets of the national government that would fall into the possession of each succeeding government so as to determine how to fairly apportion the national debt to the succeeding governments. Of course, in that case, both succeeding governments transitioned to membership in the European Union, guaranteeing the free flow of goods, labor and capital between them and the other members of the E.U., as well as guaranteeing certain civil liberties and democratic processes to the persons in each of the succeeding republics.
Looking at the electoral maps of the United States of recent presidential elections, it appears that the potentially disaffected red states of a socially liberal, economically socialist blue nation constitute a nearly compact, self-contained block from the southeast coast to the Rocky Mountain west, plus Alaska. Indiana and Ohio appear as two purple states jutting into an otherwise blue Great Lakes region.
New Hampshire is a purple state in a deeply blue New England (but, being a coastline state, it would not matter much that it was not connected by land to other breakaway states). Contrariwise, Colorado and New Mexico are two purple or blue states in the Rocky Mountain region that might wind up as enclaves of Old America amidst the independent republics of New America.
Of course, once it becomes clear that a majority of the states — and specifically those that are the most productive — are seceding, the remaining states of Old America will have to consider their options. Would they want to bail out the corporations, the unionized public-school teachers, municipal workers, and the UAW, and the bankrupt states of California and New Jersey, among others, when the burden falls much more heavily onto them?
A state like Minnesota, with a solid work ethic, which tends to vote Democratic in presidential elections, might think it could do better with New America than with the moochers of Old America. Even Iowa, where they bury farmers only three feet deep nowadays, so they can still get their hand out, will have to weigh the pros of the ethanol subsidies they receive versus the cons of the taxes they will have to pay to subsidize everybody else. Possibly, once the rush gets underway, the only “state” that will be left in Old America will be the District of Columbia.
Clifford F. Thies is the Eldon R. Lindsay Chair of Free Enterprise at Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA. Send him mail. See his article archives. Comment on the blog.
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Man, if that (secession) happened, I’d be so happy.
It is a reasonable belief that the Civil War would not have started if Fort Sumpter had not been fired upon. Clearly the seceding state must offer access to federal facilities and initiate negotiation for either their purchase, removal, lease or shared usage treaty. As an example, should Texas secede, the great NASA center in Houston would need to be kept in continuous use during any transition.
I think we need to see secession within the next ten years. The fact is that the Federal government, no matter which party it’s currently run by, has grown so large as to become oppressive in its very nature. The only way to counteract this is secession with the realization that if we go to such measures, force may be necessary, though highly undesirable.
I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if we saw it within the next two years.
A note on Texas secession-
I wouldn’t be surprised if Texas did allow Nasa to continue to operate, but I would expect Texas to annul all Federal land ownership including the Johnson Space Center. In truth, next to Alaska, Texas is the best equipped State to go its own way. Even the Texas electrical grid is separate from the other states.
This is mostly true, thou it doesn't really matter as Canada a separate nation shares the same grid as most of the Northern United States. I think any State could do it, all of them are larger than many of the independent nations of the world, and all of them already have pretty much all of the essential functions of government preexisting. From law enforcement to military(national guard), every State in the United States is equip to be its own nation if it saw that as necessary to restore and preserve its people's liberty.
Our Federation was founded to maintain that that capability just in case it were eventually needed, all the real problems would actually come as a result of political/military conflict between the new nation and the old Federation.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened in the next two years either. I think we have two major catalysts coming up. The first is the 2010 election. The second is the 2012 election. If it doesn’t happen shortly before or after one of those, it’s just a matter of time until the natural degradation of the US forces the hand of the people.
And yes, the states would most likely assume control of all federal lands and equipment located within their state.
I am a Christian pastor and father of six. I work, pay taxes, obey the laws, and believe the time has come to speak open and passionately for secession. All the resolutions in the world won’t get the usurping federal judiciary and congress to back off. Unless and until we come to that place where we are prepared to secede from the Union and die defending our right to do so, then we are just fooling ourselves. Washington will not let go of its power until it is forced to do so.
Well did the Hebrew prophets write about us in these Last Days.
We run to and fro. We glop as blind men.
We are deceived by our religions that do not believe the prophets as the Messiah said in Luke 24:25.
It is a great thing that the Creator knows how week and dumb we are and still has mercy on us.
Billy
Amen to Secession! The author of this articles certainly has a strong grip and understanding of the truth and principles of freedom as expressed by our founders, who of course learned from the enlightenment philosophers of generations before and of the truths contained in the natural and revealed laws of God.
Well the seeds for secession have certainly been planted. An over-bloated Federal Government that is seeking to collect power from the people; a media that is heavily supported by an individual with a very shady past (look up George Soros’ activity in the 1940s); and a frustrated populace that’s just about one step shy of getting out the pitchforks and heading to DC.
Our best hope for a peaceful solution starts with our State legislatures. By great good fortune and likely a healthy dose of Divine Providence, those legislatures are listening to their constituents and beginning to attempt to reel in the insanity in DC. Of course at this point DC hasn’t so much as let out a peep of recognition about what is happening.
Either DC is completely blind (likely) or they really think we’re just going to roll over and give in again.
I think the People are finding their Voice again.
God willing there is a peaceful resolution to be found. While I encourage everyone to do their best to ensure a peaceful resolution is reached, I urge everyone to be aware that a peaceful resolution is not as likely as we might desire to believe. I encourage everyone to prepare as if they know it will end in violence and bloodshed so that they may make preparations for the safety of their families. In the end, we can only go at this one way: Peacefully if possible, by force if necessary.
I do believe secession is our only way out of the current course being dictated. As pointed out in previous comments, it is an issue where both parties have contributed. The love of and devotion to money corrupts our entire democratic system. Simply put, it is a greed thing that is corrupting DC.
I do have concerns of taking the same path as done in the Czech and Slovak Republics. The bigger threat to our freedoms and liberties today comes from our unconstitutional relationship with the UN. The threat of loosing our 2nd amendment rights is on the table now in the UN under the disguise of Children’s Rights. For me, our secession and new declaration of independence would have to exclude us from the UN and its authorities.
“For me, our secession and new declaration of independence would have to exclude us from the UN and its authorities.”
For me that’s a given.
NATO, UN, WHO, IMF, WTO, etc. All of ‘em. They’ve gotta go.
This is a very interesting op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal –
"Divided We Stand
What would California look like broken in three? Or a Republic of New England? With the federal government reaching for ever more power, redrawing the map is enticing, says Paul Starobin"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204...
Would love to see what kind of discussion this might generate
Dale, I read that article as well – definitely some interesting things to consider. The country is in the crapper, to say the least, and I don't think it's odd that people are talking about such issues.
I have tried to be as pragmatic about all this as possible. For 20 years I was a journalist – and I am proud to say, a political atheist.
The American historian, Will Durant once observed;
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within."
I think one of the major reasons that "history tends to repeat" – is that we have yet to recognize the patterns. Instead we focus on the particular event and the characters on the stage at that moment.
To be very blunt, I think what we are witnessing is the collapse of the United States – of our society… of this “empire” – this nation/state – but this is not a unique event; it has happened before – to ancient societies/nations/empires from Egypt – to Greece – to Rome – and the list goes on and on and indeed it is a long and notable one. It is part of the cycle of existence – however, the outcome of the collapse is and can be varied – especially when it is based on the awareness of the people involved … not the governments.
So I would agree with Paul Starobin's remark;
"Still, the precedent for any breakup of today’s America is not necessarily the one set by the musket-bearing colonists’ demanded departure from the British crown in the late 18th century or by the crisis-ridden dissolution of the U.S.S.R. at the end of the 20th century. Every empire, every too-big thing, fragments or shrinks according to its own unique character and to the age of history to which it belongs."
All around us – even to the extent of life itself – is a condition of illusion and perception (and I don’t mean that in a negative way) – in our particular situation, it is the illusion or perception that Central or Federal government is indispensable – to demonstrate that, it attempts to provide more and more for its people – then to prolong its usefulness, it begins to MANDATE its usefulness – if not held in check, as is our case – it then begins to develop an air of infallibility. (and boy oh boy have we seen this lately – Was up in Washington this past week – It has come to be a place that I DESPISE visiting – For nearly 35 years I have dealt with these folks – both Dems and Republicans – and many from both camps I consider friends (even "Charlie" Rangel -love him dearly – DON'T TRUST HIM – but one knows that from the onset) They have always been out of touch (bless their hearts) but NOW, the atmosphere of CONCEIT AND ARROGANCE is so thick it makes one sick.)
Taxes, spending, federal deficit, are not the issue, its what the same Federal government does with that money and power unconstitutional that is the issue.
That issue of usurping our rights and overthrowing the consented Constitution although is a matter of the most grave and fundamental important of lawlessness which does constitute grounds for the revolutionary actions of secession if the unconstitutional acts are being imposed by a hostile and now lawless majority.
I can think of no more ideal, no more legitimate grounds for the separation of one people from anther than to protect the rights of one from the other who refuses to follow the law(Constitution).