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Is secession always wrong?
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I received a lot of spirited comments from the last post, so I thought I'd keep poking the bear with the stick.
There's an assumption going through the topic of Sarah Palin's (non)relationship to the Alaskan Independence Party that works something like this: Secession is wrong, bordering on evil, the AIP advocates secession, Sarah Palin broadcast a speech to the AIP and her husband belonged to it, therefore she is a close enough proxy for the AIP and is therefore wrong, bordering on evil.
But is any of that sound? Not even at the beginning.
Our collective reference for secession is the American Civil War, wherein we are generally taught that the South was an evil. But the secession of the Southern States from the Union is an example of secession, not the definition of it. So what's the definition? Let's try this: secession is a group's formal claim of independence from a federation or ruling State. It might not be the independence you like, but it's clearly the independence somebody likes. So you already have a question of imposing one set of morals and tastes over another. Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's not.
America was founded on the right of secession. That's why Northerners were often very uncomfortable with the War Between the States. What exactly were they fighting for – to keep people tied to the United States? Didn't their great grandparents bleed to put a stop to that sort of thing. What was the essential difference between an England that kept Americans as subjects largely for economic reasons, and an America that kept Southerners as subjects largely for economic reasons?
From here, we can say (partly because we're the victors), that the South's raison d'être for secession was to maintain the horrible practice of slavery. That's not exactly the historic truth, but whatever. Close enough, we'll say.
Because it's beside the point.
All of the former Soviet Republics are secessionists. So are Poland, Hungary and Austria. The Czech Republic and Slovakia seceded from one another. At one time France had to secede from England, recently of Germany. Mexico seceded from Spain and France. Heck most of Latin America seceded from Spain or Portugal. All of Europe seceded from Rome, all of Asia seceded from Mongolia. Taiwan is almost a secessionist. Manchuria and Korea were. The North Vietnamese seceded from the French then conquered their own Southern relatives. Most of us wish Tibet was able to secede. Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan. Pretty much all of the Middle East seceded from other rulers in the Middle East.
Israel is a secessionist, though there are fewer Progressives these days who are fond of that idea.
If you consider the acquiescence to partition secession by third party, then Joe Biden was also a secessionist, because he wanted to split Iraq. Dumb, maybe or not. But not evil.
Given that, we can see that there probably isn't a useful Kantian maxim about secession, and that before we presume to bathe others in our spittle and righteous indignation, we ought, perhaps, to spend a few more minutes contemplating the truth value of what we're arguing.
So the question we have to ask is: when is secession good. That's a much more prickly question.
If you want to argue that it's inherently immoral to secede from the United States, we should reconsider America's domination of Cuba and the Philippines. Thanks, but no. Most of us like an independent Cuba. Just not so much under mass-murdering, totalitarian Socialists.
While we certainly seem confident in our post hoc judgments about the virtues of a particular act of secession, there's probably no prima facie method for judging the merits of most, if any, cases. Look at Kosovo and Serbia. Look at Ireland.
I'm not defending the AIP; I don't like the idea of Alaska seceding. Also, there are claims that the AIP is a strictly racist organization that hates Native Folk. Seems a bit hard to sustain, given that Todd Palin is a Native Person and is the Palin who belonged to the AIP. But I suppose Progressives in San Francisco can simply write him off as a race traitor. A Native Uncle Tom "who's just acting White."
But what the Alaskan Independence Party tells us is what all separatist movements tell us: there's serious disagreement about how the State is relating to the people, and that we need to figure out how to address those disagreements rather than dismiss them out of hand. Truly, sometimes the only way to address those disagreements is by force of arms. But to dismiss those disagreements out of hand makes us guilty of tyranny. It creates the uncomfortable position of being loyalists to the State of America and traitors to its founding cause.
For Conservatives, that's almost always been a big question. For Progressives who spent the last 8 years crying "fascist imperialism!" it should be a sobering one.
