Secession Begins at Home | Jeff Deist

I think that you are going to enjoy our program this morning we decided to have slightly shorter talks 20 minute talks this morning to allow for two separate Q&A sessions because we'd really like to hear what you have to say we're going to have some young people gumming around with microphones so that you can participate and so be thinking about your questions we have some speakers today who are well equipped to handle whatever they might be and I would especially say that our two speakers Brian McClanahan and Tom woods are both unusually capable of answering any questions you might have or disabusing you of any illusions you might have about secession that it's somehow an American that it's somehow illegal or unconstitutional where it wasn't contemplated by the founders or worse yet that it somehow has been settled by the Supreme Court so with that in mind I would ask you to consider an argument this morning that I've been making to myself lately which is basically that I think we should stop viewing or thinking about secession as some sort of mass national political movement that almost takes place mechanically or physically and that it involves a national vote and a redefining of geopolitical borders and the creation of a new legislature and all these things that we tend to think of when we think of as a Cession movement maybe most recently we think of the referendum that took place in Scotland just late last year what I would say instead is we should think of secession is something that really begins at home that it begins more on the individual and local level and that it's far less daunting if we view it that way than if we think we have to convince a majority of the country to come our way and in fact I would submit to you that when considered in that light secession actually becomes a tactically more advantageous approach to creating a more libertarian society than perhaps trying to organize some sort of nasha national political candidate so that said I look out here I think presumably most of you are probably in this room today because you have so in some interest in this topic session secession or you're very concerned about what's going on in America you might be interested in secession as an abstract concept or maybe you're very serious and you view it as some sort of viable possibility for escaping a federal government that increasing numbers of Americans now view with fear and distrust I think you can relate to this as Mises wrote in 1927 prescient 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 in election that if one must endure it is the consequence of a military conquest so I'm sure the sentiment is something many of us share today Mises understood that mass democracy was no substitution for a liberal society in fact was the enemy of it of course he was right now a hundred years later almost since he wrote that we've been conquered we've been occupied by the state and it's phony veneer of democratic elections the federal government is not a putative ruler of nearly every aspect of life in America that's why we're here today entertaining this audacious notion of secession an idea that Mises elevated to a defining principle of classical liberalism of course it's tempting it's entirely human to close our eyes and and resist radical change we'd all like to to sort of live in America's past but I'm sure you've heard this before I'll borrow a line from the novelist LP Hartley you said the past is a foreign country they do things differently there the America we thought we knew ladies gentlemen mirage it's a memory it's a foreign country and that is precisely why we should take secession seriously both conceptually that's consistent with libertarianism and is a real tactical autumn excuse me alternative for the future now does anyone in this room really believe that a vast multicultural socially social democratic welfare state of 320 million people across more than 3,000 miles with hugely diverse economic social and cultural interests can be indefinitely just commanded from Washington DC without intense conflict and strife does anyone really believe that we can somehow unite together under the US state that endlessly divides us rich versus poor black versus white Hispanics versus Anglos men versus women old versus young secularists versus Christians gays versus traditionalists taxpayers versus entitlement recipients urban versus rural red state versus blue state and political class versus everybody well frankly it seems clear that the federal government's hell-bent on vulcanizing us anyway so why not seek out ways to split apart rationally and non violently why dismiss secession the pragmatic alternative is staring us all in the face now since most of us in this room layer Americans although I'm told we have an Aussie here as well somewhere he's missing the Australian Open this afternoon so my focus today will be on the political and cultural situation here at home but the same principles of self ownership and self-determination apply universally whether it's considering Texas independence or dozens of active attacted breakaway movements in places like Scotland in Venice and Catalonia in Belgium and I truly believe that secession movements both here and abroad represent the last best hope for reclaiming our birthright the great classical liberal liberal tradition and the civilization it made possible in a world gone mad with state power secession offers hope that truly liberal societies organized around says civil society and markets rather than central governments can still exist fair enough but I know what you're all thinking you're thinking how could this really happen is this possible wouldn't creating a viable secession movement in the u.s. necessarily mean convincing a majority of Americans or at least a majority of the electorate to join a mass political campaign much like a presidential election well I say no bill libertarian secession movement need not involve mass political organizing in fact national political movements a pander to left into the right may well be hopelessly naive and wasteful of time and resources instead our focus should be on hyper localized resistance to the federal government in the form of a bottom-up revolution as Hans Hermann hapa terms it now hapa counsels us to use what little daylight the state affords us defensively so just as force is only justified in self-defense the use of democratic means is justified only when used to achieve non democratic libertarian Pro property ends in other words a bottom-up revolution employs both persuasion and democratic mechanisms to secede at the individual the family the community and the local level in a million ways that involve turning our backs on the central government rather than attempting to bend its will now secession properly understood in my view means we're throwing consent and walking away from DC not trying to capture it politically and convert the king so why is the road to secession not political at least at the national level frankly having having spent a few years in Washington I would say that any notion of a takeover the political apparatus in DC is fantasy and even if a political sea change were to occur the army of 4.3 million federal employees is not simply going to disappear overnight so convincing libertarians to adopt a libertarian political system if such an oxymoron could even exist is a hopeless endeavor at least in our current culture I'm sure we all understand that politics is a trailing indicator right culture leads politics follows there can't be a political sea change in America lesson until there's a philosophical and educational and cultural sea change and over the past hundred years progressives and I use that term euphemistically as it's used commonly today progressives have overtaken education media fine arts literature pop culture and thus as a result they've overtaken politics not the other way around so this is why our movement the libertarian movement must be a battle for hearts and minds it must be an intellectual revolution because right now bad ideas were on the world we can't expect a libertarian political miracle to happen in a nil libertarian society don't get me wrong I think the libertarian movements growing I think our philosophy is winning I think we are winning hearts and minds this is the time for boldness not pessimism but I question whether libertarianism libertarianism will ever be a mass which is to say majority political movement I mean some people will always support the state and we shouldn't kid ourselves about this it really doesn't matter why is it genetic is it something in our DNA that makes us inclined to be libertarians or status is it environmental factors is it family influences at bad schools is it media influences or is it simply some innate human desire to seek security the false security blanket of the state maybe we'll never know but we make a fatal mistake when we water down our message when we dilute it to seek approval from people who seemingly are hardwired to oppose us and our arguments no matter what and we waste precious time and energy what's important is not convincing those who fundamentally disagree with us what's important is the degree to which we can extract ourselves from their political control and this is why secession is a tactically superior approach in my view it is far less daunting to convince liberty minded people to walk away from the state then to convince those with the status mindset to change now I have to come back to Hoppa and he raises a question that some of you are thinking in your minds again is what about the federales when the federales simply crush any such attempt at localized secession Hoffa asks well I'll quote him a little more he says well he says this with a German accent he says they surely would like to but whether or not they can actually do so is an entirely different question it is only necessary to recognize that the members of the governmental apparatus always represent even under conditions of democracy a very small proportion of the total population so Hoffa envisions a growing number of what he calls implicitly seceded territories engaging in non-compliance with federal authority he continues without local enforcement by compliant local authorities the will of the central government is not much more than hot air it would be prudent he continues to avoid a direct confrontation with the central government and not openly denounced its authority I think we can all agree with that rather it seems advisable to engage in a policy of passive resistance and non cooperation one simply stops to help in the enforcement in each and every federal law now some of our conservative friends like to talk a good game when it came to Obamacare on that very with on that very notion and finally hapa concludes I have to bear with him here that he was speaking in the mid-1990s for context Waco a tiny group of freaks is one thing but to occupy or to wipe out a significantly large group of normal accomplished upstanding citizens is quite another and quite a more difficult thing now you may disagree with dr. Hoffa as to the degree to which the federal government would actively order military violence to tamp down any secessionist hot spots but as larger point is unassailable the regime is largely largely an illusion and consent to its authority is largely based on fear not respect eliminate the illusion of benevolence and omnipotence and can set quickly crumbles so imagine what a committed cadre of coordinated libertarians could achieve in America 10% of the US population roughly 32 million people would be an unstoppable force of non-violent withdrawal from the federal Leviathan and his hapa posits no easy matter for the state to arrest or attack large groups of citizens and as American American history teaches our own history the majority people in any conflict are likely to be fence sitters rather than antagonists now of course I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about our friends on the left and right and and one of our the great ironies of our time is that both the political left and right complained bitterly about the other but steadfastly refused to consider once again the obvious solution staring us in the face now the the left you know God love them one might think that progressives would champion states rights in the tenth men because it would liberate them from the Neanderthal right-wingers who stand in the way of their progressive utopia you know imagine California or Massachusetts having every progressive policy firmly in place without any pre-emptive federal legislation to worry about without having to worry about federal courts and without having to share federal tax revenues with the hated red states imagine the 11 counties that make up the San Francisco Bay Area voting for whatever they wanted in their own little world these are counties that routinely overwhelmingly Sen Dianne Feinstein Nancy Pelosi - to the US Senate these are counties that overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama what would be so wrong with them having things the way they want but if you ask a progressive what would be so wrong with the Salt Lake City Provo area in Utah having things the way it wants then all some progressives aren't so progressive they strongly oppose federalism and states rights much less secession and the reason of course is the progressives think they're winning they don't end for a minute to let any of us walk just walk away from what they've got planned for us so democracy is the great political Shibboleth the great orthodoxy of our time and the supposed champions on the Left can't abide true localized democracy which is all secession really is they're interested in democracy when the vote goes their way and then only the most attenuated federal level or if they could have it their way at the international level the last thing they want is local control over anything they're the great centralizers and consolidators of state power and live-and-let-live is just not in their DNA all you need to know about progressives is this in Ron Paul's America vast areas whole cities whole regions could collectively get together on a voluntary basis and have Obamacare or single-payer health care or any system they might want for their health care and nobody in a Ron Paul administration would would bother them one whit but in Barack Obama's America nobody in Utah can walk away from Obamacare so it's a one-way street now I'd like to say that I have better news to report about our our conservative friends but I don't our friends on the right are scarcely better many conservatives are still hopelessly wedded to the Lincoln myth and remain in thrall to the central wealth warfare state no matter the cost as an example consider the Scottish referendum that took place back in September it's something I watched avidly enjoyed it you know and I got to two separate arguments from conservatives and even some libertarians some conservatives said well gee whiz Jeff you know you've got one state right now in Westminster controlling the UK and then you're going to have two states so libertarians ought not to be out there promoting more states on the worldmap but reducing the size and scope of any single States Dominion is healthy for liberty because it leads us closer to the ultimate goal of self-determination at the individual level granting each of a sovereignty over our lives and again quoting Mises from liberalism if it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person it would have to be done the other argument I heard from conservatives is that well gee whiz what if it's secession movement results in a more liberal government in the new territory and the people there actually end up with less freedom that's not very libertarian and of course this was actually possibly the case in Scotland that the younger people who voted overwhelmingly for the secession referendum consider the London government in Westminster far too conservative there they were much more to the left their vision is for a Scotland that is that is a Scandinavian type social welfare state they hated being yoked to London and they wanted to be yoked to Brussels so have that secession referendum passed in Scotland the Scots may very well have ended up with with with less freedom within the confines of Scotland but I would ask everyone in this room to say if those 11 Afra mentioned counties in San Francisco were to break away from the rest of California or to break away from the rest of the United States wouldn't the rest of California be better off without those 11 San Francisco Bay Area counties so what neither progressive nor conservatives understand or worse maybe they do understand is that the session provides a mechanism for real diversity a world where we are not all yoked together provides a way for people with widely divergent views and interests to live peaceably as neighbors instead of suffering under one commanding central government that pits them against each other but ultimately the wisdom of secession begins and ends with you bad ideas run the world but must they run your world so this is the question we all have to ask ourselves today how seriously are we willing to take our right to self-determination what are we willing to do to assert it I submit that session secession really begins at home with the things we can all do to remove and distance ourselves from the state authority quietly non-violently inexorably the state's crumbling all around us with its own fiscal mess this monetary system we don't need to win control DC we just didn't mean to make sure that none of us go down with it so in closing let me make a few humble suggestions we're beginning a journey of personal secession now not all of these may apply to you no one can judge or decide what's best for you in terms of your own personal circumstances and your family but all of us can play a role in a bottom-up revolution by doing everything in our power to withdraw our consent from the state first I would advise you to secede from intellectual isolation talk to like-minded friends family and neighbors whether physically or virtually to spread liberty and cultivate relationships and alliance the state prefers to have us atomized without a strong family structure or social network secede from dependency become as self-sufficient as possible with regard to food fuel water cash firearms and physical security at home resist being reliant on government in the event of a natural disaster a bank crisis would alike secede from mainstream media which promotes the state in a million different ways ditch cable ditch CNN ditch the major newspapers find your own sources of information in this internet age and take advantage of a luxury previous generations didn't enjoy in that regard secede from state control of your kids by homeschooling your unschooling them and if you if you're really in a pinch both Tom woods and Ron Paul would be happy to help you in that regard secede from college by rejecting mainstream academia Nats student loan trap educate yourself using online learning platforms obtaining technical credentials or simply reading as much as you can secede from the US dollar by owning physical precious metals by owning assets denominated in foreign currencies and by owning assets abroad secede from the federal tax and regulatory regimes by organizing your business in your personal lives to be as tax efficient and unobtrusive as possible secede from the legal system by legally protecting your assets from patience lawsuits and probate courts as much as possible secede from the state healthcare racket by taking control of your health taking responsibility for your health and questioning the medical orthodoxy now this doesn't apply Texans but secede from your state by moving to another state with a better tax and regulatory environment better home schooling laws better gun laws maybe one with just more like-minded people more golf courses per capita in Maine is very low on that list secede from political uncertainty in the u.s. by obtaining a second passport or secede from the US all together by expatriated it's up to you know none of us can make these decisions for you these are suggestions but most of all secede from the mindset the government is all-powerful or too formidable to be overcome the state is nothing more than basquiat great fiction our Murray's gang of thieves writ large let's not give it the power to make us unhappy or pessimistic all of us regardless of our personal circumstances or our ideological bent are married to a very violent abusive spendthrift it's time ladies and gentlemen to get a divorce from DC thank you you

Channel: misesmedia

Views: 18,800

Rating: 4.9228296 out of 5

Keywords: Secession, History, Ludwig Von Mises Institute (Organization), Government, Freedom, Peace, Liberty, Home, Jeff Deist, Individualism (Literature Subject), Family, Economy, Austrian School, Economics, Strategy

Id: 1p7F8EhY91g

Length: 23min 49sec (1429 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 29 2015