WEBVTT NOTE The Ethics of Secession 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 I'd like to address the following question. Is there a moral right of secession? 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:09.000 Now, my answer to that probably won't surprise many of you. There is. 3 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:14.000 But I'd like to begin by considering why the question itself is important. 4 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:21.000 First of all, the question whether there's a right of secession has real practical significance. 5 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:27.000 The world of politics forces decisions on us. States are made and they're remade. 6 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:34.480 As we watch states being made and remade, we have to decide, as individuals, what attitude 7 00:00:34.480 --> 00:00:37.160 we'll adopt towards these events. 8 00:00:37.160 --> 00:00:41.140 Do people struggling for their independence have a right to do so? 9 00:00:41.140 --> 00:00:48.160 Do states have a right to attempt to crush persons' attempts to seek their own freedom? 10 00:00:48.160 --> 00:00:52.800 Even if we decide to ignore events like this, we've implicitly taken a position on it. 11 00:00:52.800 --> 00:00:55.480 We've implicitly adopted an attitude towards it. 12 00:00:55.480 --> 00:01:01.560 So again then, politics forces us to, in one way or another, consider this question. 13 00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:04.900 But the question also has real philosophical importance. 14 00:01:04.900 --> 00:01:08.000 The basic question of political philosophy is this. 15 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:11.520 What is the moral basis of the state's authority? 16 00:01:11.520 --> 00:01:14.400 Is there any such thing as a legitimate state? 17 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:18.040 In the history of modern political thought, three basic kinds of answers have been given 18 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:19.700 to that question. 19 00:01:19.700 --> 00:01:23.760 The first is found in the writings of John Locke, the English political philosopher who 20 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:31.760 In his book, Two Treatises of Government, published in 1690, argued that legitimate political authority is founded on the consent of the governor. 21 00:01:31.760 --> 00:01:44.760 Right of secession challenges this position if it says that a group of persons who have given their consent to be governed by a political authority may legitimately withdraw their consent in order to form a new political union. 22 00:01:44.760 --> 00:01:55.760 A century later, the Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that we owe allegiance to government, we have a duty to obey government because government is useful to us. 23 00:01:55.760 --> 00:02:03.760 Government is useful when it produces order, order which facilitates our pursuit of self-chosen ends. 24 00:02:03.760 --> 00:02:07.760 But a right of secession challenges this position as well. 25 00:02:07.760 --> 00:02:19.760 If it tells us that a group of persons may withdraw from a state in order to form a new one that they find more useful than the one that presently governs them. 26 00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:24.760 And a third argument is found in the writings of a German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. 27 00:02:24.760 --> 00:02:34.760 Kant argued that if the policies, if the laws of a state could in principle command universal agreement that is among the citizens subject to them, 28 00:02:34.760 --> 00:02:41.760 The Theory of Money and Credit is a just state. Its justice is what gives it authority over the persons it governs. 29 00:02:41.760 --> 00:02:51.760 But a right of secession challenges this position too. If it enables people to claim the moral right to withdraw from even a just state. 30 00:02:51.760 --> 00:03:00.760 So the right of secession is an important philosophical issue because it requires us to rethink various answers that have been given to the basic problem of political theory. 31 00:03:00.760 --> 00:03:08.760 It requires us to add qualifications to our views about why the state can have the authority to govern. 32 00:03:08.760 --> 00:03:12.760 Contemporary political philosophers should be looking at the issue of secession. 33 00:03:12.760 --> 00:03:14.760 Strangely enough, they're not. 34 00:03:14.760 --> 00:03:19.760 When I decided to write a paper on secession, I was stunned by the dearth of material, 35 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:22.760 ethical material available on the subject of secession. 36 00:03:22.760 --> 00:03:29.760 I found one important work written by a philosopher named Alan Buchanan, a book entitled Secession. 37 00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:35.760 And I am going to, later on, towards the end of my talk, comment on some of his ideas. 38 00:03:35.760 --> 00:03:38.760 But I want to divide my talk up into three parts. 39 00:03:38.760 --> 00:03:44.760 First, I want to advance certain moral considerations that support a right of secession. 40 00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:50.760 Secondly, I want to define the right and detail any limits on the exercise of the right. 41 00:03:50.760 --> 00:03:58.760 And then finally, I'll conclude by looking at some of the objections that might be raised against a moral right of secession. 42 00:03:58.760 --> 00:04:08.760 Okay, so to begin with, I want to start out by asking this, what do we mean when we say that something is a good or a value? 43 00:04:08.760 --> 00:04:14.760 This is relevant to our subject because we're going to ask, what is the value or the good of political order? 44 00:04:14.760 --> 00:04:22.760 We can begin by saying this, that our ideas of what is valuable to us or good to us or what motivate us to act, 45 00:04:22.760 --> 00:04:28.760 They will give us reasons to do things, to realize our goals, to make things happen. 46 00:04:28.760 --> 00:04:33.760 Now, there are a great many answers that philosophers have given to this question about what is good, what is valuable, and so on. 47 00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:37.760 I just want to look at how we describe what is valuable or what is good. 48 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:40.760 And we can divide answers up into two basic kinds. 49 00:04:40.760 --> 00:04:46.760 The first says that values or goods are personal or agent, relative, and character. 50 00:04:46.760 --> 00:04:53.760 What that means is, is that anything that is a good or a value is a value for some particular person. 51 00:04:53.760 --> 00:04:56.760 Very clearly this tells us why value is motivated to act. 52 00:04:56.760 --> 00:04:59.760 If something is a value for me, it gives me motivation to pursue it. 53 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:03.760 It gives me a reason to try and make it happen. 54 00:05:03.760 --> 00:05:10.760 When social scientists study human behavior, an agent-relative conception of value is what they have in mind. 55 00:05:10.760 --> 00:05:18.760 What they have in mind is certainly economics, which is the most sophisticated of social sciences, very explicitly has developed an agent-relative conception of value. 56 00:05:18.760 --> 00:05:26.760 We can also say that this appeals to common sense. We do things because we want to do them, because we find them good or we find them valuable. 57 00:05:26.760 --> 00:05:35.760 But there is another conception of value, according to which value is impersonal or agent-neutral in character. 58 00:05:35.760 --> 00:05:39.760 Now there are a great many versions of this, but we can say that they share the following feature. 59 00:05:39.760 --> 00:05:46.760 They all say that we must value certain things. There are certain things that we must value, whether we value them or not. 60 00:05:46.760 --> 00:05:51.760 And if that sounds like a strange idea, that's because it is. 61 00:05:51.760 --> 00:05:58.760 To begin with, it does a very poor job of explaining what it is about value that motivates us. 62 00:05:58.760 --> 00:06:03.760 Remember I started out by saying when we think about values we're asking, what is it that motivates people to act? 63 00:06:03.760 --> 00:06:20.760 Agent-neutral values, the conception of impersonal or agent-neutral values, don't really help us in explaining how they motivate people to act, because they cut out the individual connection, the personal connection between a goal and the agent, the person that values. 64 00:06:20.760 --> 00:06:28.760 Now, other researchers have dealt with this question of agent-neutral or impersonal values more adequately than I can hear, but I'd like to raise a couple of points about it. 65 00:06:28.760 --> 00:06:37.060 The most important and most influential political theory today that employs an agent-neutral conception of value is utilitarianism. 66 00:06:37.060 --> 00:06:46.760 Utilitarianism, of course, being the doctrine that whatever promotes the greatest quantity of want satisfaction or happiness, however defined, is the morally correct policy to pursue. 67 00:06:46.760 --> 00:06:55.260 Now, just looking at that as an example of philosophy employing an agent-neutral conception of value, we can say that there are a couple of moral questions we can ask about it. 68 00:06:55.260 --> 00:07:12.260 First of all, we can charge this doctrine with treating individuals unjustly because unless it happens to be the case, maybe by chance, that my plans, my goals, my projects are those that are endorsed by the utilitarian standard. 69 00:07:12.260 --> 00:07:16.260 They just happen to fall into the category of that which promotes the greatest quantity of happiness in this case. 70 00:07:16.260 --> 00:07:18.260 I have to abandon them. 71 00:07:18.260 --> 00:07:29.260 I have to say, I ought not to value those things which I value, and I ought to value instead those things which happen to be endorsed by this agent-neutral utilitarian standard. 72 00:07:29.260 --> 00:07:40.260 A second related objection is the idea that an agent-neutral conception of value, such as that found in utilitarianism, violates the integrity of our lives. 73 00:07:40.260 --> 00:07:47.260 Human beings are pursuers of value. We identify goals and we act to achieve them. That's what makes our lives meaningful to us. 74 00:07:47.260 --> 00:07:50.260 In a sense, it's meaningful to us. That's what makes our lives what they are. 75 00:07:50.260 --> 00:07:59.260 But an agent-neutral conception of value, again, is manifested in utilitarianism, violates this because it makes us a tool for other persons. 76 00:07:59.260 --> 00:08:08.260 It makes our lives, our energies, our efforts, and so forth, things that are valuable because they are useful for promoting the goals, the ends of others. 77 00:08:08.260 --> 00:08:16.260 Well, those are things in mind. I'm going to argue for succession from the perspective of normative individualism. 78 00:08:16.260 --> 00:08:24.260 Normative individualism simply being the doctrine that all human values are personal or agent relative in character. 79 00:08:24.260 --> 00:08:32.260 This tells us something about political institutions, namely that political institutions are valuable and that we have a reason to support them. 80 00:08:32.260 --> 00:08:40.260 only insofar as they're useful, as they facilitate our pursuit of self-chosen values. 81 00:08:40.260 --> 00:08:46.260 And a set of political institutions, a state, possesses value for everyone concerned, everyone subject to it, 82 00:08:46.260 --> 00:08:51.260 only insofar as it works to the mutual benefit, the mutual advantage of all concern. 83 00:08:51.260 --> 00:08:59.260 So as a test to them for looking at particular moral principles, such as a right of secession, we can ask this. 84 00:08:59.260 --> 00:09:07.260 When we examine a particular political principle, would it be possible to get a voluntary agreement on it? 85 00:09:07.260 --> 00:09:10.260 Would people voluntarily submit to this rule? 86 00:09:10.260 --> 00:09:18.260 Now, contractualism, as a moral test of political principles, the way I'm going to do it here works in kind of a backward fashion. 87 00:09:18.260 --> 00:09:23.260 We're going to ask this, could anyone reasonably reject a particular political principle or rule? 88 00:09:23.260 --> 00:09:29.260 If so, if we can understand why someone might reject a particular rule or principle, we 89 00:09:29.260 --> 00:09:33.540 can say that it would be unjust to impose it on anyone. 90 00:09:33.540 --> 00:09:38.880 This contractualist test is a version of what's known as the principle of universalizability. 91 00:09:38.880 --> 00:09:42.300 There are various versions of this principle, but there's one that's well known to everybody, 92 00:09:42.300 --> 00:09:48.460 the golden rule, doing to others as we would have them doing to us. 93 00:09:48.460 --> 00:09:53.180 When we approach the subject of justice, we're asking what should we expect from other persons? 94 00:09:53.180 --> 00:10:06.180 And the contractualist test, again, as a variant of the principle of universalizability, implies this, that what we should expect and what we should extend to others are the same. 95 00:10:06.180 --> 00:10:19.180 We should extend to others the same consideration, the same recognition of ourselves as pursuers of value, as individuals whose lives have meaning to us, the same consideration that we expect for ourselves. Extend that to others. 96 00:10:19.180 --> 00:10:30.180 So, with that in mind, we can ask you, would anyone be able to reasonably reject a rule, a political rule that prohibited secession under all circumstances? 97 00:10:30.180 --> 00:10:33.180 Certainly, I think the answer is yes. 98 00:10:33.180 --> 00:10:39.180 First of all, the contractualist test invalidates exploitative political principles. 99 00:10:39.180 --> 00:10:46.180 Forceful opposition to an act of secession by a group of persons seeking their own independence, their own freedom, 100 00:10:46.180 --> 00:10:53.180 benefits the state or those that oppose the act of secession at the expense of the secessionists. 101 00:10:53.180 --> 00:10:57.180 In this sense then, opposition to secession becomes an exploitative policy, 102 00:10:57.180 --> 00:11:03.180 one that can be rejected by normative individualism and the contractualist test I've described. 103 00:11:03.180 --> 00:11:11.180 We can say that anyone could reasonably reject a rule that prohibited secession under all circumstances 104 00:11:11.180 --> 00:11:23.180 In view of the fact that we can assume, realistically, that there's an inherent uncertainty about the prospects of life under any political arrangement over the long term, 105 00:11:23.180 --> 00:11:32.180 it's reasonable to suggest that at some point any of us might become dissatisfied with the political system that governs us and that we might wish to succeed. 106 00:11:32.180 --> 00:11:40.180 Because future dissatisfaction with a set of political institutions is possible, then anyone could reasonably reject a rule that would lock them into a political system 107 00:11:40.180 --> 00:11:53.180 The Upshot of this is that any state, any just state, should provide a constitutional means for persons to secede from it. 108 00:11:53.180 --> 00:11:57.180 Any state that prohibits secession, then, is an unjust one. 109 00:11:57.180 --> 00:12:00.180 Now I want to move to defining the right of secession. 110 00:12:00.180 --> 00:12:03.180 First of all, ask the question, whose right is it? 111 00:12:03.180 --> 00:12:07.180 Now, if you can, in the philosopher I mentioned earlier, treat secession as a group right. 112 00:12:07.180 --> 00:12:15.180 The idea of group rights seemed to me to be one of those, kind of like agent neutral values, the idea that only an academic could come up with. 113 00:12:15.180 --> 00:12:21.180 But a group right is defined as follows. It's a right that's possessed by a group and only by a group. 114 00:12:21.180 --> 00:12:30.180 It can be exercised only by a group of people, and it exists or it's justifiable because it promotes the interests of that group of people. 115 00:12:30.180 --> 00:12:35.180 Typically when people think of group rights, what they have in mind are cultural or ethnic groups. 116 00:12:35.180 --> 00:12:44.180 You know, a lot of the talk about, or a lot of the, you know, kind of multiculturalist dogma that we find on college campuses around the country today is based on a conception of group rights. 117 00:12:44.180 --> 00:12:57.180 And when we look at the concept of secession, you know, we can ask, is it necessary that a group who wants to secede be able to identify themselves as a recognizable cultural, ethnic group and so forth? 118 00:12:57.180 --> 00:12:58.180 Is this necessary? 119 00:12:58.180 --> 00:13:05.180 If so, there's a problem, because that means that there's an additional obstacle that a group who wants this to see has to overcome. 120 00:13:05.180 --> 00:13:09.180 That is, they have to say, we should say because we have some historical claim to this territory, 121 00:13:09.180 --> 00:13:12.180 because we as a group have been, or as a class have been mistreated by the state, 122 00:13:12.180 --> 00:13:18.180 or because we have some common cultural or ethnic or linguistic characteristics that we want to promote. 123 00:13:18.180 --> 00:13:20.180 I want to raise a couple of points about this. 124 00:13:20.180 --> 00:13:30.180 First of all, it's not obvious why shared goals, common goals are the only ones that would legitimate an act of secession. 125 00:13:30.180 --> 00:13:34.180 It's not obvious why personal goals might not do the job just as well. 126 00:13:34.180 --> 00:13:40.180 Let's imagine a hypothetical state in which there are various people or various groups of people, 127 00:13:40.180 --> 00:13:43.180 all of whom wish to secede but for entirely different reasons. 128 00:13:43.180 --> 00:13:46.180 Some wish to secede to escape high taxes. 129 00:13:46.180 --> 00:13:56.180 Others wish to secede to escape oppressive laws, and still others wish to secede to avoid being subjected to ridiculously inefficient public services. 130 00:13:56.180 --> 00:14:03.180 All these are different reasons, and they're all connected with personal goals, personal values, personal plans, 131 00:14:03.180 --> 00:14:15.180 each of which separately seems to be a legitimate reason to wish to withdraw from a state, to conclude that the state is not a value for us. 132 00:14:15.180 --> 00:14:20.180 But these aren't shared values. These are agent, relative or personal values. 133 00:14:20.180 --> 00:14:27.180 So it doesn't seem necessary then that we define secession as a group right, because it can be tied to individual interests and individual values. 134 00:14:27.180 --> 00:14:36.180 Secondly, the fact that group action, that collective action, is required for an act of secession is correct, is true. 135 00:14:36.180 --> 00:14:39.180 But that doesn't necessarily link it to the concept of group right. 136 00:14:39.180 --> 00:14:52.180 If we think, for example, of rights of due process, procedural rights to just treatment by others, collective action is required to create reliable judicial and law enforcement institutions that protect these rights. 137 00:14:52.180 --> 00:15:03.180 But the value of these institutions clearly is inextricably bound to the interests that we have as individuals, not to common goals, but to personal goals. 138 00:15:03.180 --> 00:15:15.180 So even if collective action is necessary for a group right, it's not obvious that individual rights are excluded from those that require collective action to produce or to protect. 139 00:15:15.180 --> 00:15:24.180 With these considerations in mind, then I would suggest that we understand secession as an individual right, despite the fact that it's exercised collectively. 140 00:15:24.180 --> 00:15:30.180 The interests that it protects are individual interests. The values that it promotes are individual values. 141 00:15:30.180 --> 00:15:34.180 Its justification lies in a conception of the individual. 142 00:15:34.180 --> 00:15:42.180 So we should think of secession then as an individual right exercised collectively by a group of individuals wishing to seek their own political independence. 143 00:15:42.180 --> 00:15:50.180 Thinking of secession as an individual right promotes an ideal of the self-defined political community. 144 00:15:50.180 --> 00:15:59.180 As Professor von Mises put it, the totality of freedom-minded persons who are intent on forming a state appears as the political union. 145 00:15:59.180 --> 00:16:08.180 When we think of a right of secession then, we're thinking of the freedom of individuals to define for themselves their own political destiny. 146 00:16:08.180 --> 00:16:11.180 The freedom to choose the government which will govern them. 147 00:16:11.180 --> 00:16:19.180 As far as some of the practical instruments that should be used to enable individuals to define their own political communities. 148 00:16:19.180 --> 00:16:25.180 This is, of course, a complex technical question, but I'll just very briefly make a suggestion. 149 00:16:25.180 --> 00:16:31.260 It seems to me that the way in which we can say a political unit could define itself within 150 00:16:31.260 --> 00:16:37.780 the confines of another and thereby succeed could be through a very simple two-stage process, 151 00:16:37.780 --> 00:16:41.620 one that's found in many American states, namely initiative and referendum. 152 00:16:41.620 --> 00:16:44.340 Get enough names on a petition and you have initiative. 153 00:16:44.340 --> 00:16:50.060 That is, you can place a proposal for secession on the ballot, get enough votes in a referendum 154 00:16:50.060 --> 00:16:51.940 and secession is a done deal. 155 00:16:51.940 --> 00:17:06.940 And there's no magic number that we can pick out and say what size majority should we have, right, but there's not an obvious reason why secession should require any kind of a more difficult obstacle or a higher kind of majority than other constitutional changes or legislative acts. 156 00:17:06.940 --> 00:17:17.940 So I would just, you know, kind of throwing out a suggestion, anywhere from a simple two-thirds or three-fifths majority in a popular referendum should be sufficient to conclude an act of secession. 157 00:17:17.940 --> 00:17:24.940 Now, limits on the right of secession. I suggest that there are two kinds of limits on the right of secession. 158 00:17:24.940 --> 00:17:34.940 Both of these are justified or understandable because of objections that people in a prospective secessionist state might make 159 00:17:34.940 --> 00:17:38.940 towards the secessionist movement that wants to establish a new government. 160 00:17:38.940 --> 00:17:44.940 The first is this, that a secessionist movement should be able to establish a viable political order, 161 00:17:44.940 --> 00:17:50.460 Order, one that can make and enforce law over the entire territory that it will claim. 162 00:17:50.460 --> 00:17:53.660 We can think about this in terms of the contractualist test. 163 00:17:53.660 --> 00:17:57.020 Anybody could reasonably reject being made subject to a government that would be unable 164 00:17:57.020 --> 00:18:00.900 to protect their freedom and property, in other words, to an unviable and therefore 165 00:18:00.900 --> 00:18:02.760 useless state. 166 00:18:02.760 --> 00:18:05.420 So this would give them grounds for objection to a particular act of secession. 167 00:18:05.420 --> 00:18:08.260 It has to be able to establish a viable state. 168 00:18:08.260 --> 00:18:13.900 Now as far as defense matters are concerned, this is a difficult question and I don't have 169 00:18:13.900 --> 00:18:23.900 I don't have a lot of time to go into it, but I just want to suggest that, first of all, there's a good deal of evidence that shows that states do a pretty poor job of defending their citizens from foreign attack. 170 00:18:23.900 --> 00:18:31.900 Over the last two centuries, for example, almost 70% of aggressor states have won wars involving major powers. It's not a very good record. 171 00:18:31.900 --> 00:18:42.900 Moreover, international relations are a kind of thing that are subject to rapid change. States who are a friend one day may not be the next year or the next few months. 172 00:18:42.900 --> 00:18:47.280 So there's a lot of guesswork involved in relations among states. 173 00:18:47.280 --> 00:18:48.280 So I'll just say this. 174 00:18:48.280 --> 00:18:52.920 First of all, as far as viability is concerned, a prospective secessionist state should be 175 00:18:52.920 --> 00:18:58.120 able to do one of two things, either be large enough to raise the revenue it needs to provide 176 00:18:58.120 --> 00:19:02.500 defensive forces or at the very least create diplomatic institutions that it could use 177 00:19:02.500 --> 00:19:05.440 to form defensive agreements with other friendly states. 178 00:19:05.440 --> 00:19:10.140 If so, then it can claim to be viable as far as its international relations are concerned. 179 00:19:10.140 --> 00:19:13.140 A second limit on the right of secession. 180 00:19:13.140 --> 00:19:17.140 A secessionist state must favor private property in the market. 181 00:19:17.140 --> 00:19:21.140 It must be willing to establish a regime of private property in the free market. 182 00:19:21.140 --> 00:19:24.140 Why? Because, again, we're talking about erecting a state. 183 00:19:24.140 --> 00:19:34.140 And so individuals have to be willing to apply this contractualist test of reasonable rejection to what we're proposing to establish. 184 00:19:34.140 --> 00:19:39.140 Private property in the market enable individuals to pursue self-chosen plans. 185 00:19:39.140 --> 00:19:43.140 That's what makes it valuable, right, in light of normative individualism. 186 00:19:43.140 --> 00:19:47.140 Secessionists must reject socialism as an economic alternative. 187 00:19:47.140 --> 00:19:51.140 First of all, we can relate this to the viability requirement. 188 00:19:51.140 --> 00:19:57.140 Again, as Professor von Mises showed long ago, rational economic calculation is simply impossible without a price mechanism. 189 00:19:57.140 --> 00:19:59.140 It's impossible under socialism. 190 00:19:59.140 --> 00:20:07.140 And so, finally, as we've all seen, you know, the socialist economies come crashing down, that socialism is not a viable economic alternative. 191 00:20:07.140 --> 00:20:12.140 This gives people grounds to reasonably reject being made subject to socialism. 192 00:20:12.140 --> 00:20:15.140 But there are other moral considerations as well. 193 00:20:15.140 --> 00:20:23.140 Because socialism systematically prohibits individual choice in pursuing career, economic decision-making, 194 00:20:23.140 --> 00:20:26.140 forming cooperative endeavors with other persons and so forth. 195 00:20:26.140 --> 00:20:31.140 This is what enables individuals to reject socialism as an economic alternative. 196 00:20:31.140 --> 00:20:44.140 and Economic Alternative, normative individualism, the contractualist test that I described enable people to morally reject socialism at kids. It's fundamentally unjust in this sense. 197 00:20:44.140 --> 00:20:53.140 Okay, finally, so now I've come up with these two limits on the right of secession. They're, I think, not too restrictive. 198 00:20:53.140 --> 00:21:02.140 As long as we can erect a viable political order, one that protects private property in the market, there should be no further obstacles to our right of secession. 199 00:21:02.140 --> 00:21:09.140 But Alan Buchanan, as I mentioned earlier, comes up with a few other restrictions, so I want to just very briefly touch on some of these. 200 00:21:09.140 --> 00:21:12.140 First of all, loss of state property. 201 00:21:12.140 --> 00:21:20.140 You know, if the state that we want to secede from has built roads, other economic infrastructure in the territory that wishes to secede, 202 00:21:20.140 --> 00:21:25.740 To see is this grounds for opposing a right of secession. 203 00:21:25.740 --> 00:21:30.340 This was, of course, in the period leading up to the war between the American states 204 00:21:30.340 --> 00:21:31.340 was also an issue. 205 00:21:31.340 --> 00:21:35.540 One thing we can say about it is this. 206 00:21:35.540 --> 00:21:40.500 If there is a general benefit among all the people involved in both the remainder state 207 00:21:40.500 --> 00:21:44.740 and the prospective secessionist state prior to an act of secession, that is, if everybody 208 00:21:44.740 --> 00:21:49.220 benefits, if it is to everyone's mutual advantage, before an act of secession, it's by no means 209 00:21:49.220 --> 00:22:04.220 It becomes obvious why people will be deprived of the benefits of this kind of spending later. Roads, for example, insofar as they promote economic growth and productivity, you can drive your car over the road, whether it's on one side of a boundary or another. 210 00:22:04.220 --> 00:22:14.220 Remember I said that we have to establish a regime of private property in the market. That means that we can't prohibit voluntary exchanges by individuals across boundaries of the remainder state and the secessionist state. 211 00:22:14.220 --> 00:22:23.220 So if there's a general benefit then, there's no loss to the citizens of the remainder of the state, so they have no grounds for rejection, for opposing an act of secession on this basis. 212 00:22:23.220 --> 00:22:31.220 Of course, real states don't, unfortunately, don't restrict their spending decisions to things that are universally beneficial. 213 00:22:31.220 --> 00:22:42.220 We're all familiar with the pork barrel spending and so forth, and the political process, log rolling, vote trading, that promote this, are part of a political system. 214 00:22:42.220 --> 00:22:49.220 A political system that we may not necessarily be able to be held responsible for. 215 00:22:49.220 --> 00:22:54.220 I somehow don't feel responsible for the system of law-rolling that goes on in the U.S. Congress. 216 00:22:54.220 --> 00:22:59.220 I don't really feel responsible for Port Barrel spending decisions by the U.S. Congress. 217 00:22:59.220 --> 00:23:01.220 And I don't think you do either. 218 00:23:01.220 --> 00:23:10.220 This is a political system established by political elites that promotes certain kinds of decisions that are not in fact universally beneficial. 219 00:23:10.220 --> 00:23:16.220 This is just the kind of thing that an act of secession might motivate people to escape from. 220 00:23:16.220 --> 00:23:25.220 So unless we can assign the secessionists themselves responsibility for a system of boat trading, port rail spending and so forth, 221 00:23:25.220 --> 00:23:33.220 this does not, this loss of state property does not offer any reasonable grounds for opposition to an act of secession. 222 00:23:33.220 --> 00:23:40.220 Second question. Majority rule. Certainly one reason that people may wish to secede is to escape a hostile majority. 223 00:23:40.220 --> 00:23:48.220 Is there any special value to majority rule that would enable us to say that that's too bad for the minority? 224 00:23:48.220 --> 00:23:53.220 They've lost, now they have to live by the majority decision. Secession is not an option. 225 00:23:53.220 --> 00:23:56.220 You can, and Alan Buchanan suggests that that's the case. 226 00:23:56.220 --> 00:24:08.220 But first of all, again, looking at the idea of normative individualism, it tells us that the value of political order, the value of majority rule included, depend on their usefulness to the individual. 227 00:24:08.220 --> 00:24:14.220 Majority rule can be a useful means for collective decision, but it doesn't have any intrinsic or special value. 228 00:24:14.220 --> 00:24:17.220 Certainly no agent neutral value to majority rule. 229 00:24:17.220 --> 00:24:20.220 And so this provides no reason to limit secession. 230 00:24:20.220 --> 00:24:25.660 Secession. Again, if secession is a means by which people can escape a majority tyranny, 231 00:24:25.660 --> 00:24:29.660 then majority rule by itself doesn't give any reason to oppose it. 232 00:24:29.660 --> 00:24:34.660 Okay, next, questions of territorial sovereignty. You know, when a group of persons secede, 233 00:24:34.660 --> 00:24:38.620 the state loses some territory, and on the face of it, it seems like an objection, a 234 00:24:38.620 --> 00:24:43.180 reasonable objection to an act of secession. The state or the remainder, the citizens of 235 00:24:43.180 --> 00:24:47.500 the remainder state have lost something. But does this give them moral grounds to oppose 236 00:24:47.500 --> 00:24:58.500 What is an act of secession? The fact that territory is being lost. Buchanan asked this question, how can the secessionists claim authority and control over this territory? 237 00:24:58.500 --> 00:25:06.500 How can they say that this territory should be theirs rather than that of the state they're trying to leave and the citizens of the remainder state? 238 00:25:06.500 --> 00:25:14.500 How can the citizens show this? And again, Buchanan suggests bringing the concept of group rights that they need to be able to show some special relationship to the territory. 239 00:25:14.500 --> 00:25:40.760 The Territorial Claim of a State has no meaning and therefore no validity apart from the value 240 00:25:40.760 --> 00:25:46.360 that citizens ascribe to the state and apart from their free choice in deciding which government 241 00:25:46.360 --> 00:25:53.320 will in fact govern them. So once the state loses the acceptance of its authority by secession 242 00:25:53.320 --> 00:25:59.720 it also loses its territorial claim. Too bad for the old state. Finally, are there alternatives 243 00:25:59.720 --> 00:26:04.120 to secession? That is, can we find alternatives that would be just as morally appealing as 244 00:26:04.120 --> 00:26:09.280 secessionism? Okay, two alternatives that Buchanan considers are nullification and group 245 00:26:09.280 --> 00:26:13.160 Group Veto. Both of these were ideas that were discussed, again, in the United States 246 00:26:13.160 --> 00:26:18.160 in the 19th century. Nullification, meaning that in a federal system, the federal units, 247 00:26:18.160 --> 00:26:22.340 American states, for example, could nullify or simply refuse to recognize the validity 248 00:26:22.340 --> 00:26:27.040 of acts of the national government. Group veto being John Calhoun's idea of concurrent 249 00:26:27.040 --> 00:26:32.280 majorities, that is, that people should, that different groups that are going to be affected 250 00:26:32.280 --> 00:26:37.040 by a rule can exercise a kind of veto power over the rule, a kind of veto power over legislation 251 00:26:37.040 --> 00:26:38.700 that will affect them. 252 00:26:38.700 --> 00:26:41.200 Are these replacements for an act of secession? 253 00:26:41.200 --> 00:26:43.840 Certainly, they are valuable elements 254 00:26:43.840 --> 00:26:45.200 of a political constitution, 255 00:26:45.200 --> 00:26:47.440 but are they replacements for secession? 256 00:26:49.240 --> 00:26:52.880 If so, then a right of secession is not so strongly justified 257 00:26:52.880 --> 00:26:54.040 because we could say, well, 258 00:26:54.040 --> 00:26:56.160 we can replace it with something else. 259 00:26:56.160 --> 00:26:57.720 You can suggest two criteria. 260 00:26:57.720 --> 00:26:59.960 First of all, in making this decision, 261 00:26:59.960 --> 00:27:01.180 first of all, the independence 262 00:27:01.180 --> 00:27:02.680 that a right offers is better. 263 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:04.320 How much independence do we gain 264 00:27:04.320 --> 00:27:05.960 by having a right of secession on the one hand 265 00:27:05.960 --> 00:27:08.960 Disruption vs. Right of Nullification or Group Veto on the Other 266 00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:10.960 So, independence then, one criterion. 267 00:27:10.960 --> 00:27:14.960 A second, disruption. That is, how disruptive is the exercise of the right? 268 00:27:14.960 --> 00:27:21.960 How much of a problem does it cause to other people when we exercise our right of secession or nullification in group veto? 269 00:27:21.960 --> 00:27:26.960 So, you can't suggest that we need to weigh these considerations against one another. 270 00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:33.960 Sometimes you suggest, for example, that the disruptive effects of a particular act of secession may be so great 271 00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:38.960 that they seem to outweigh the independence that the right offers to its bearer. 272 00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:42.960 As a result, he says, the choice between these rights is indeterminate. 273 00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:48.960 In response, I would suggest that very clearly we should weight independence, 274 00:27:48.960 --> 00:27:51.960 the value of independence, over that of disruption. Why? 275 00:27:51.960 --> 00:27:56.960 First of all, otherwise, people can be locked in to a political order that they disvalue. 276 00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:02.960 But this is precisely what I was saying that contractualism and normative individualism enables them to reject. 277 00:28:02.960 --> 00:28:08.960 So we get a strong hint from what we've already talked about then that independence must be weighted over disruption. 278 00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:22.960 Secondly, normative individualism tells individuals that morally they can stand up for themselves and reject calls for them to abandon their own goals on behalf of the goals and the interests of others. 279 00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:33.960 With those considerations in mind then we can say that secession and the criterion of independence that is connected with should be ranked over nullification and group veto. 280 00:28:33.960 --> 00:28:42.960 Secession then is essential for any just constitution. Nullification, group veto, not suitable replacements. 281 00:28:42.960 --> 00:28:48.840 Okay, to conclude, I've talked about the limits on the right of secession to erect a viable 282 00:28:48.840 --> 00:28:53.300 political order, one that establishes a regime of private property in the market. 283 00:28:53.300 --> 00:28:58.200 The upshot of the argument is that all states should provide a peaceful means for persons 284 00:28:58.200 --> 00:29:02.800 within their borders to secede and establish a new political order for themselves. 285 00:29:02.800 --> 00:29:09.640 Not war, not destruction, not violence and death, but a constitutional right of secession. 286 00:29:09.640 --> 00:29:11.960 This is required for any just state.