Needed a week off after Scotland, but we’re back and more seditious than ever. For starters, if you haven’t read this, do:
Devolution—meaning the decentralization of power—is the geopolitical equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics: inexorable, universal entropy. Today’s nationalism and tribalism across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East represent the continued push for either greater autonomy within states or total independence from what some view as legacy colonial structures. Whether these movements are for devolution, federalism, or secession, they all to varying degrees advocate the same thing: greater self-rule.
In addition to the traditional forces of anti-colonialism and ethnic grievance, the newer realities of weak and over-populated states, struggles to control natural resources, accelerated economic competition, and even the rise of big data and climate change all point to more devolution in the future rather than less. Surprisingly, this could be a good thing, both for America and the world.
Adam Gurri’s on pluralism is a good companion piece to it. Honestly it’s a bit unsettling to see someone as unflappably congenial as Gurri get this pessimistic:
Pluralism is a state of ceasefire across communities which allows the number of communities and conceptions of the good to multiply as their members strive to find answers. The pessimist will see in this nothing but the breakdown in moral order. The optimist will see a broadening of perspectives, of available ground level knowledge, of the stock of stories and ideas available within our common culture. The optimist believes that conceptions of the good which can persist over time are bounded by human nature and by history, but that these bounds are actually quite large, and that exploring them morally enriches us all. …
All caveats aside, I consider myself a partisan on behalf of pluralism. I can see practical value in it. I also believe there is a moral value, and dignity, in conferring the freedom and the responsibility on every citizen to find their own way. But I fear that the historically contingent political ceasefire that makes it possible is necessarily a tense one, and that the boiling over of hostilities into active bloodshed is unavoidable. The only question is how long a timeframe peace and a liberal order can be maintained over, a question I’m not sure there can be an answer for.
*****
Ron Paul: More secession movements please; they’re as american as apple pie.
Dan McCarthy attaches a cautionary note to Ron Paul’s cri de coeur, noting it’s not necessarily a libertarian idea (a point this blog has been making for a long time):
The specifically libertarian case for secessionism is manifold: in fact, it’s several cases for different things that may not add up to a coherent whole. First, there is theradical theory that secessionism in principle leads to free-market anarchism—that is, secessionist reduction of states to ever smaller units ends with reduction of the state to the individual. Second, there is the historical claim that smaller states tend to be freer and more prosperous. Third is the matter of self-determination, which is actually a democratic or nationalistic idea rather than a classically liberal one but historically has been admixed with liberalisms of various kinds. What it means is that “a people” has “a right” to exit a state along with its territory and create a new state.
A fourth consideration is that suppressing secession may require coercion. And finally there is the pragmatic idea that secession is the best way to dismantle the U.S. federal government, the summum malum for some libertarians. (As an addendum, one can mention the claim that the U.S. Constitution in particulartacitly approves secessionism, but that’s a separate argument from cheering for secession more generally.)
It should be obvious that the first and third claims negate one another, and in practice the third overrules the first: real-world secession never leads to individualist anarchism but only to the creation of two or more states where formerly there was one. The abstract claim that every minority within the newly formed states should then be allowed to secede doesn’t translate into anyone’s policy: instead, formerly united states that are now distinct security competitors tend to consider the residual minorities who belong to the other bloc to be internal security threats. These populations left behind by secessionism may or may not be disloyal, but they are readily used as pretexts for aggressive state actions: either for the stronger state to dismember or intimidate the weaker one in the name of protecting minorities or for either state to persecute minorities and build an internal security apparatus to suppress the (possibly imaginary) enemy within. Needless to say, none of this is particularly good for liberty.
