Secession: The Reasonable Option Everyone Resists | Tom Woods

I know Tom woods doesn't need an introduction to most of you but let me just say this like I said about Judge Napolitano earlier with Tom's pedigree with his education and and with just his drive his work ethic his productivity he could very easily have had any number of cushy jobs in either the academic or think-tank establishment but he didn't do that and he chose to to stay true to his own beliefs and like Judge Napolitano and frankly lots of other famous libertarians before him tom has never moderated or watered down his message even when it might make his own path professionally or financially easier and I think we've all benefited from that so Tom woods thank you Wow thank you very much thank you very much for that one of my themes over the years has been that the American political and media classes behave as if there is a three by five card of allowable opinion and if you stray from that three by five card you will be smeared condemned written out of polite society you won't be refuted that's one thing you can guarantee you can make all the reasonable arguments you want but if you're taking a position that is held by neither Mitt Romney nor Hillary Clinton you are wrong by definition so there is no need to refute you all we need to do is Lew Rockwell says is just point and say eke a mouse this there's no need to respond to anything we're saying we peons don't deserve a refutation from our betters so when I am invariably smeared for talking about themes like this it's completely expected that's what the media classes do you strayed from the 3x5 card you're not entitled to a refutation if you get up at an event like this and you say that I do not believe that a system in which 320 million diverse people are ruled infallibly by a single city is the most humane form of political organization that eminently reasonable statement will not be refuted you will simply be smeared and condemned you're obviously crazy you're crazy this is the best way to organize society and it's so obviously the best way that even to question it makes you a heretic well I'm very glad to be a heretic in this bizarro world Oh heresy all right and I'll tell you something secession is nowhere to be found on that three by five card here's the three by five card you know you can favor thirty eight percent top income tax rate or 37 percent that's on the card you know you can favor the federal courts telling you to do this or do that right that's on the card but secession is like I don't know it's in some some other galaxy that hasn't been discovered it's not even on nowhere near it and yet what is secession when we talk about secession we are saying that this political line should be drawn here instead of here wow what a terrifying proposition that we might want to propose such a thing as that can't have people saying that that's not acceptable let me tell you what is acceptable let me tell you what the media classes do consider to be acceptable to the point that they've never ruined anyone's career over it they've never smeared anyone over it they've never said such and such politician associates with this person and this person held this terrible view here let me tell you some things that you can say and you will not be written out of polite society for you can say we need to go to war with Iraq on the basis of nothing no not nothing now I take that back not quite nothing on the basis of the claim that the Iraqi regime possesses an unmanned drone program that can reach Great Britain within 45 minutes now of course only a complete imbecile believes that and it turned out that the entire unmanned drone program that Iraq supposedly had consisted of a single prototype made out of plywood and string that's okay who knows how many people were killed fifty thousand a hundred thousand a million two to four million people displaced destruction on a scale one can hardly imagine but who was written out of polite society for that oh I better go write a an in-depth article about such and such because such-and-such is friends with a politician who favored the iraq war and that really smears him forever you are not smeared forever for supporting that and yet you should be that should end your career not saying that this line should be drawn here instead of here but the bizarre moral priorities of the media and political classes in our country are completely the opposite of what anyone with a basic moral sense would think or how about the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s trying to prevent necessary items from getting into the country we all remember Madeleine Albright when confronted with the statistic that half a million Iraqi children had died because of the sanctions we all recall her telling sixty minutes that she thought the price had been worth it now you can come back at me and say that's a United Nations figure and I don't believe it that's irrelevant because she didn't question the figure she said half a million children dead we think is worth it now when was the last time a major media outlet condemned her for this or said anybody who associates with Madeleine Albright should have his name dragged through the mud and be smeared and condemned and have his career destroyed that has never happened never so it's pressed a policy difference that we had some people favored starving children other people didn't you know it's just a policy difference but if you want to draw this line here rather than here now that that is something you will be dismissed for not refuted not refuted because all right-thinking people know the line belongs here that's weird if you think those are bizarre moral priorities that our media classes have then welcome to the human race the trouble is Americans have been taught to treat political boundaries with an idolatrous reverence like they are sacred things that have come down to us from heaven they are no such thing at best they are merely utilitarian things if they work at whatever their function is supposed to be then they work if they don't they don't that was Thomas Jefferson's view he wasn't gonna worship an idol Jefferson said well you know this Confederacy could split into two or three smaller units and you know maybe that would work you know it's just a utilitarian thing we'll have to wait and see so he again he went off the 3x5 card because on the 3x5 card it says that the current boundaries of the united states are holy and sacred and if you say that they are merely a utilitarian thing that might have to be adjusted according to how well they work but there's something wrong with you we don't need to refute you you refute yourself by questioning these holy and sacred boundary lines as Clyde Wilson once put it large centralized states have become mystical self-justifying goals they need no further rationale moreover people who claim to favor diversity but who favor political centralization are shall we say confused because what to institution when we look at the process of political centralization and I know it's a lot to ask our political and media classes to know anything about the history of Europe but let's suppose that they might if we look at the history of political centralization in the nineteenth century what effect did that have on ethnic and cultural differences I leave that to the student as an exercise to the contrary centralized states have imposed a crushing uniformity on society they are the very opposite and indeed enemies of diversity in any meaningful sense of that word but simply to ask might the United States be too large by the way that is a tame question compared to the questions we normally want to ask that I think we're about being on pretty good behavior today if you ask me but simply to say is it maybe too much to have 320 million people of diverse backgrounds with diverse interests with diverse value systems all governed under one city just ask that question why should you be a heretic because of that so what I've done what I did last year I released my first book that I've released in for just about four years it's this one it's called real dissent and the subtitle is a libertarian sets fire to the index card of allowable opinion there's a handful of them out there but if if they're gone I set up a website real dissent calm with information about it by the way I decided for this book of my 12 this is the only one that I read the audiobook myself I narrated the audiobook version because in my experience when the publisher assigns a narrator to your book the publisher assigns someone who reads your book like it's the instruction manual to a microwave oven so it was much more fun to read it myself but that's really what my whole career is has been about and that's what the Mises Institute has been about we don't care what the 3x5 card says it is stultifying an anti-intellectual to confine yourself to it so as you can see with this little thing on your table which I hope you'll take home with you what I've also been doing is every single day or every weekday I have a show the Tom Wood show it's a podcast you can get on iTunes and what I'm doing is the the the tagline of the show is shredding the 3x5 card of allowable opinion and the reason I point this out to you is that it's incredibly liberating to live in a world where I can easily do this every single day I can drive the bad guys crazy every single day and they're still you know they're still around the major media outlets they're still around they'll be around for a while but they can see the writing on the wall they know the future is decentralized information they know the future is podcasting is people relying on trustworthy individuals not just people who happen to be with a an influential media institution well let's talk about some practical considerations that come up when we think about Secession let's think about history we look at the history of political consolidation we go in Europe from thousands of independent territorial units to just a few dozen today as Hans hapa has pointed out in the second half of the 17th century Germany was made up of two hundred thirty four countries fifty one free cities and 1,500 independent nightly manors by the early 19th century all three had fallen below 50 and then of course by 1871 we get German unification what light the world had been like in the absence of German unification is the kind of question that is not raised because it is not on the card the card says that centralization is a progressive force so you don't think about contrary to fact scenarios that deny centralization occurred but it might be interesting to see how the 20th century might have turned out had Hitler simply been a good Postmaster General which was how one German official put it he would make a good Postmaster General we never got to test out that theory because the progressives and the Conservatives in their typical not at all unusual unholy alliance gave us the unified Germany similar situation of course occurred in Italy with the consolidation there what are the economic effects of centralization where sometimes told that well great big countries make you richer we have to have great big countries to be rich well the Soviet Union was a great big country nobody really was rich unless he was politically well-connected there China's a great big country people are becoming somewhat wealthier there but throughout most of the 20th century I wouldn't have held it up as a model and yet little Singapore little Hong Kong are flourishing there is no connection between size and economic prosperity it has to do with the policies pursued by the governments of those areas and the more territorial units you have the more pressure there is on the political leaders of these places not to oppress the public because the power of exit is very easy when there's another political unit right next door it's easy to go there and these leaders will lose their tax well suckers if they impose too many unjust burdens on the people so they are restrained by the presence of competition it is impossible as it's been said to imagine the horrors of the Soviet Union being inflicted by the mayor of a small village now how is it that Western Europe came to have such prosperity and such success and one important ingredient was precisely as Lew Rockwell mentioned earlier today that there was no single European political unit but to the contrary you had a highly decentralized structure that is indeed what helped to make this all possible also secession breaking away far from being backward secession actually increases the ethnic linguistic and cultural diversity of the world centralization is usually meant to stamp these things out think of almost any country in the world where there was forcible centralization and then compare before and after in terms of diversity it the question answers itself but do we ever get a chance to evaluate this all these questions rationally no because it's not on the card you raise the issue you're smeared you are not refuted well don't we need large centralized states for the cultivation of human excellence right great cultures come out of large states or for human flourishing we need this Renaissance Florence had a citizen population of about 40,000 and it produced one of the most extraordinary cultures in world history one need only be reminded of the case of classical things which yielded Renaissance after Renaissance at least three Renaissance --is in Western civilization inspired at least in part by classical Athens and because these small states are small they can't be self-sufficient and it would be preposterous for them to try so therefore they will tend to have a libertarian free-market approach to international trade and commerce what about security do we need large states for security we can come up with many contrary examples of small states defeating large ones large ones getting bogged down in small states tribes in Afghanistan defeating the Soviet Union or the Greek city-states defeating the Persian Empire we have the city-state of Venice for 1,200 years we have the case of Switzerland but yet as Professor Livingston would would would know think of the major centralized states of the West in the 20th century and how safe were they to live in how safe a place was France to live in in the 20th century how safe was Britain how safe was Germany to live in how safe were the Soviet Union or Italy or Japan what about minorities those people who will condemn us for favoring the obvious and morally compelling case for decentralization we'll say it it's probably some secret plot to oppress people because if I wanted to oppress people I would try to resurrect an idea that's been toxified for the whole American public and somehow on my own revive the concept I mean if I want to oppress people I'm sure I could think of something a little easier than that so probably that's not it but that is the claim but think about what the history of minorities has been in the world under large centralized states I think about a case that's dear to me because I'm half Armenian how did the Armenians do under the the Ottoman Empire was that just a wonderful bastion of diversity for them possibly a million and a half of them were killed how about the Asians in Uganda who were thrown out of the country and worse how about the Ukrainians in the Soviet Union were they enjoying diversity there the Ukrainians those of them who survived that is the attempt to to starve them 5 to 6 million of them did not survive that attempt and of course the case of Hitler's Germany is is too obvious even to need mentioning about some other practical considerations Lew made reference in the panel discussion to the ratio of representation that exists in the first Congress in 1790 there was one representative for every 30,000 Americans then in 1910 Congress capped the number of members of the House of Representatives permanently at 435 well as of 2014 we now have one representative for about every seven hundred and thirteen thousand Americans now if you think that that makes representation even more meaningless than it was before you have strayed from the card they're not going to refute that point or say hey you know you just raise an interesting argument I never thought of that you can't raise it now if this ratio of Representatives to Americans had held in 1790 there would have been about four members of the House of Representatives conversely if the older represent the older ratio held today there would be well over in fact 10,000 members of the House of Representatives as of 2014 Congress and the president spend about three trillion dollars a year that's 435 representatives 100 senators and one President having that much financial power well then think about and again professor Livingston urges us to think about questions like this think about the United States think about California if California were a separate country it would have the seventh largest economy in the world so there's nothing crazy about saying maybe this line should be drawn this way instead of that there's nothing crazy about that at all it's just a practical question that's all it is it's just a practical question Texas would have a larger GDP than Brazil Florida's would be larger than Australia's if you combine Illinois and Ohio it's would be larger than Canada's but we're not even allowed to think that maybe this might be living on a smaller political scale might be a more humane way to live now there is a tradition among people on the Left who do believe in that like Kirkpatrick sale I've had him on my show who do think that yeah of course it would be that's what we were supposed to be all about in the 60s was humane communities face-to-face interactions not one representative for seven hundred and thirteen thousand people this is preposterous but the mainstream left of course is on the card so they're not even gonna then I'm gonna entertain this so to me these are relevant considerations but beyond that we can follow Bryan McClanahan and look at the American tradition decentralization is deeply embedded within that tradition the Declaration of Independence speaks of free and independent states and by States it means places like Spain France that's what they mean by state in that diplomatic language these states have full power to levy war conclude peace contract alliances establish Commerce and do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do when the British acknowledged the independence of the colonies which had which were then States it acknowledged not the Independence of the United States as a single blob but as a group of states which they listed one by one even before they were independent states or at least had been acknowledged by the world that they were they were already exercising powers we associate with sovereignty Massachusetts Connecticut and South Carolina outfitted ships against the British it was the troops of Connecticut that took Ticonderoga in New Hampshire the executive was authorized to issue letters of marque and reprisal in 1776 it was declared that the crime of treason would be thought of as being perpetrated not against the states United into an indivisible blob but against the states individually article 2 of the Articles of Confederation says that the states quote retain their sovereignty freedom and independence and of course you can't retain something if you don't have it in the first place the ratification of the Constitution was carried out not by a single national vote of a mythical American people it was carried out one state at a time because that's what the United States was a collection of societies that's why the Constitution refers to the United States consistently in the plural emmerich Dave Attell who of course was one of the major international law theorists of the 18th century said in his work in the law of nations from 1758 that if a smaller body delegates a power to a larger this does not make that smaller body any less sovereign than it was before so this plus many many other pieces of evidence besides show that the issue of secession and decentralization it's not a matter of well people who disagree with us have some arguments and we have some arguments and so I guess it's just a wash no one's ever gonna know who's right the arguments are entirely on our side which is precisely why the enforcers of approved opinion or thought controllers never want to meet us on the ground effects never good luck I would say come on up here and we'll talk about it good luck because you don't have the evidence it does not exist well as I wrap up I want to think about well actually before I wrap up let me tell you one other thing that I like I like that Europeans of great stature agreed on the American right of secession Alexis de Tocqueville the most astute foreign observer of the United States said in democracy in America the Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states and in uniting together they have not forfeited nationality nor have they been reduced to one and the same people if one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so and the federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims either by force or by right and it's worth noting that Richard Cobden who again is is probably not well known today but he should be Richard Cobden was a great statesman of the 19th century helped to get the Corn Laws repealed which were making food more expensive for everybody in British society except you know it benefited the large landowners he helped to get that repealed Cobden said that look he said our highest European Authority namely Tocqueville has spoken to us on the right of secession he says it's a little unreasonable in the New York politicians to require us to treat the south as rebels in the face of the opinion of our highest European authority as to the right of secession anybody gonna be blockheaded enough to pretend Richard Cobden was a supporter of slavery I mean really I mean are we to be subject to that Lord Acton one of the great libertarians of the 19th century said that the prospect of secession filled him with hope because of the importance of decentralization to the tradition of Liberty but ultimately it is perverse that this very discussion is off the table we can't even raise the question and meanwhile mainstream left and right are determined to make sure that our political discussion is confined to inconsequential inanities but the enforcers of aproved opinion better enjoy it while it lasts because it's true that the gatekeepers still have their gates but the walls have come down let's each of us in our own way set fire to that index card of allowable opinion I'm doing it with my show every weekday Tom woods calm I'm doing it with so far I've made 360 videos on history government and economic for Ron Paul homeschool calm so that and there's nothing the media and political classes can do about that that a new generation will be educated and will not have these ideas ridiculed not mentioned smeared but will engage with them but most importantly look at what the Mises Institute is doing I had the benefit of an elite education at Harvard and Columbia but there was no academic experience in my life that can match the week I spent at the Mises University summer program in 1993 that changed me forever helped the Mises Institute by becoming a member and joining us in this great fight to educate the next generation and to rip that 3x5 card to shreds thank you very much you

Channel: misesmedia

Views: 64,458

Rating: 4.9328437 out of 5

Keywords: Thomas Woods (Author), Secession, Ludwig Von Mises Institute (Organization), Peace, Freedom, Liberty, Rights, Politics, State, Government, Anarchism (Political Ideology)

Id: IXOEdvfMeIY

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 30 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/julianleroux]

This is my favorite piece of libertarian media at the moment. Quick succession of virtually irrefutable arguments for the right to secession. Furthermore, I have come to the conclusion that secession is the one single concept that libertarians should spend most of their time promoting and explaining.