DemocracyThe God That Failed (59 page)

Finally, the insight into the widespread and growing secessionist potential also permits an answer to the last question regarding the dangers of a central government crackdown.

While it is important in this regard that the memory of the secessionist past of the U.S. be kept alive, it is even more important for the success of a liberal-libertarian revolution to avoid the mistakes of the second failed attempt at secession. Fortunately, the issue of slavery, which complicated and obscured the situation in 1861,
³¹
has been resolved. However, another important lesson must be learned by comparing the failed second American experiment with secession to the successful first one.

The first American secession was facilitated significantly by the fact that at the center of power in Britain, public opinion concerning the secessionists was hardly un
ified. In fact, many prominent British figures such as Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, for instance, openly sympathized with the secessionists. Apart from purely ideological reasons,
which rarely affect more than a handful of philosophical minds, this lack of a unified opposition to the American secessionists in British public opinion can be attributed to two complementary factors. On the one hand, a multitude of regional and cultural-religious affiliations as well as of personal and family ties between Britain and the American colonists existed. On the other hand, the American events were considered far from home and the potential loss of the colonies as economically insignificant. In both regards, the situation in 1861 was distinctly different. To be sure, at the center of political power, which had shifted to the northern states of the U.S. by then, opposition to the secessionist Southern Confederacy was not unified, and the Confederate cause also had supporters in the North. However, fewer cultural bonds and kinship ties existed between the American North and South than had existed between Britain and the American colonists, and the secession of the Southern Confederacy involved about half the territory and a third of the entire population of the U.S. and thus struck Northerners as close to home and as a significant economic loss. Therefore, it was comparatively easier for the northern power elite to mold a unified front of "progressive" Yankee culture
versus
a culturally backward and "reactionary" Dixieland.

³⁰
See on this "old" liberal conception of democracy, for instance, Mises,
Liberal
ism:
In
the
Classical
Tradition
(Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1985). "The right to self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state," writes Mises,

thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars. (p. 109)

³¹
For a careful analysis of the issues involved in the War of Southern Independence see Thomas J. DiLorenzo, "The Great Centralizer. Abraham Lincoln and the War Between the States,"
Independent
Review
3, no. 2 (1998).

In light of these considerations, then, it appears strategically advisable not to attempt again what in 1861 failed so painfully: for contiguous states or even the entire South trying to break away from the tyranny of Washington, D.C. Rather, a modern liberal-libertarian strategy of secession should take its cues from the European Middle Ages when, from about the twelfth until well into the seventeenth century (with the emergence of the modern central state), Europe was characterized by the existence of hundreds of free and independent cities, interspersed into a predominantly feudal social structure.
³²
By choosing this model and striving to create a U.S. punctuated by a large and increasing number of territorially disconnected free cities—a multitude of Hong Kongs, Singapores, Monacos, and Liechtensteins strewn out over the entire continent—two otherwise unattainable but central objectives can be accomplished. First, besides recognizing the fact that the liberal-libertarian potential is distributed highly unevenly across the country, such a strategy of piecemeal withdrawal renders secession less threatening
politically, socially and economically Second, by pursuing this strategy simultaneously at a great number of locations all over the country, it becomes exceedingly difficult for the central state to create a unified opposition in public opinion to the secessionists which would secure the level of popular support and voluntary cooperation necessary for a successful crackdown.
³³

³²
On the importance of the free cities of medieval Europe on the subsequent development of the uniquely European tradition of (classical) liberalism see Cities
and
The
Rise
of
States
in
Europe,
A.D.
WOO
to
1800,
Charles Tilly and Wim P. Blockmans, eds. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994).

If and only if we succeed in this endeavor, if we then proceed to return all public property into appropriate private hands and adopt a new "constitution" which declares all taxation and legislation henceforth unlawful, and if we then finally allow insurance agencies to do what they are destined to do, can we truly be proud again and will America be justified in claiming to provide an example to the rest of the world.

³³
The danger of a gover
nment crackdown is gr
eatest during the ini
tial stage of this se
cessionist scenario,
i.e., while the numbe
r of free city territ
ories is still small.
Hence, during this p
hase it is advisable
to avoid any direct c
onfrontation with the
central government.
Rather than renouncin
g its legitimacy alto
gether, it would seem
prudent, for instanc
e, to guarantee the g
overnment's "
property" of fed
eral buildings, etc.,
within the free terr
itory, and "only
" deny its right
to future taxation a
nd legislation concer
ning anyone and anyth
ing within this terri
tory. Provided that t
his is done with the
appropriate diplomati
c tact and given the
necessity of a substa
ntial level of suppor
t in public opinion,
it is difficult to im
agine how the central
government would dar
e to invade a territo
ry and crush a group
of people who had com
mitted no other sin t
han trying to mind th
eir own business. Sub
sequently, once the n
umber of secessionist territories has reached a critical mass—and every success in one location promoted imitation by other localities—the difficulties of crushing the secessionists will increase exponentially, and the central government would quickly be rendered impotent and implode under its own weight.