Just in case you all want to look at some secessionist theory from someone else besides yours truly here is a listing of links, plus a couple books you might consider picking up. Plus links to and brief descriptions of a couple of secession news items of note. Some exciting stuff, especially for policy wonks! Check it out.

Lady LibertySecessionist Theory

Political scientists had to take secession seriously after the dissolution through secession of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s. Since then several works of note have come out. And I’m sure this is not an all inclusive list.

In 1991 philosophy professor Allen Buchanan wrote the book “Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce From Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec” in which he outlined rather limited rights to secession under certain circumstances, mostly related to oppression by people of other ethnic or racial groups, and especially if they had conquered you in the past. You can see full details of his current take on secession here.

In the fall of 1994 the Journal of Libertarian Studies published Robert W. McGee’s 23 page article Secession Reconsidered. He writes from a libertarian perspective, but holds that secession only is justified if secessionists can create a viable, if minimal, state on contiguous territory.

In April 1995 the Ludwig Von Mises Institute sponsored a secession conference in Charleston South Carolina. (The New Republic was so excited about it recently they even put up the announcement flyer in PDF form. (Must have been that photo of Ron Paul that got to them!)

Papers from the conference were later published in an excellent book called “Secession, State and Liberty” and included articles like: “The Secession Tradition in America” by Donald Livingston;“When is Political Divorce Justified?” by Steven Yates, “The Ethics of Secession” by Scott Boykin, “Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State” by Murray Rothbard,“Yankee Confederates: New England Secession Movements Prior to the War Between the States” by Thomas DiLorenzo, “Was the Union Army's Invasion of the Confederate States a Lawful Act? by James Ostrowski and articles on Canadian and European secession.

In July 1998 a Rutgers University journal called “Society” published papers from a “Symposium on Secession and Nationalism at the Millennium” featuring articles on “The Western State as Paradigm” by Hans-Herman Hopee, “Profit Motives in Secession” by Sabrina P. Ramet, “Rights of Secession” by Daniel Kofman, “The Very Idea of Secession” by Donald Livingston and “Secession, Autonomy, & Modernity” by Edward A. Tiryakian.

In 2003 Aleksandar Pavkovic, Associate Professor in Politics, Department of Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University wrote an excellent exploration of the topic entitled Secession, Majority Rule and Equal Rights: a Few Questions. It includes descriptions of five justifications for a general right of secession: “From a ‘Total Privatisation’ of Land to a Problem-Free Secession: Anarcho-Capitalism”; “From Recursive Majoritarianism to Unequal Rights of Secession: Democratic Secessionism”; “From a Desire for Enhanced Participation to Unequal Rights of Secession: Communitarian Secessionism”; “From a National Culture to a Separate State: Cultural Secessionism”; and “From a Threatened Culture to a Secession: The Secessionism of Threatened Cultures.” He also explores the very important topic of “How to Preserve Equal Rights of Secessionists and Non-Secessionists.” A must read to stimulate secessionist thought!

In the fall of 2007 the University of South Carolina sponsored a secession conference. You can read 30 short abstracts of papers presented here.

Well, I hope I’ve given you all enough homework. Something tells me my first self-published on demand book should be about secession. There’s lots of material to synthesize, even before I do my own theorizing.

Just for fun, a review of three recent articles on secession.

Ketcham Article
In mid-January freelance journalist Christopher Ketcham wrote an excellent pro-secession article “Most Likely to Secede” that was published in a number of a href="http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3225&Itemid=81">Free Press outlets. Ketcham writes a lot about the Vermont secession movement after this introduction: Increasingly, I have no fealty to the U.S. government. This has nothing to do with George Bush, bogeyman of the Left, the war in Iraq, or Halliburton, and everything to do with the reasonable assessment that the United States is too big for its own good. Too big in its 300 million people to be represented by 550 mostly millionaire men (not women) in a far-off swamp called Washington, D.C. I therefore have stopped calling myself a U.S. citizen."When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another… a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."—The Declaration of Independence...

Policy Wonk Article
It was just a matter of time before big security groups and think tank wonks stated reporting on the U.S. secession movements. In early January 2008 John C K Daly, an independent counsultant and adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, did the first of a three part expose on “separatist movements in the United States” for ISN Security Watch. He entitles it Fighting terrorism since 1492since it is about the Lakota Sioux tribe members who have declared independence from the US unilaterally, citing a string of broken treaties dating back to the 19th century and announcing creation of the “Lakotah Republic.” The article is actually quite accurate, fair and balanced, including in describing the split in the group that happened less than two weeks after it held it’s Washington DC press conference.

Unfortunately, Lakota tribal politics have been very divisive for decades and this has turned into one more he said, they said, We’re the real group, No We’re the real group struggle between personalities and factions. You can keep up with developments on Wikipedia. I personally decided to stay away from that article. Too confusing! Plus if they think you are taking the wrong side they send you hate mail! So that doesn’t just happen in Vermont. Oi!

Crazy “Anti-Zionist” article
The funniest response to the Daly article was from a very weird and allegedly anti-Zionist web site that brags about how many times it’s been called “antisemitic.” An article called The Palestinian Struggle and the Lakota Nation's secession from the USA re-prints Daly’s article and then asserts: The fact that a scholar of the crypto-Jewish Middle East Institute bothers to write a long article on the topic makes it pretty clear that the Zionazis are behind the indigenous movements from Hawaii to Alaska to the Midwest. They are doing so as a reminder to U.S. citizens that they too have dispossessed a native population, and therefor have no right to lecture Israelis on their treatment of the Palestinians. They are also trying to scare U.S. citizens, that if the Palestinians were successful in their struggle against the Zionist invaders, they too might be forced one day to pack and leave.

As it happens the Middle East Institute was formed and is run by ex-state department types, most of whom were stationed in Arab nations and who are notoriously pro-Arab. And even if this was a rabid pro-Israel organization which hoped to use Lakota independence for just that purpose, it would not mean that they are “behind” indigenous movements. Any more than all those rich Chinese and Iranians who’d love to see the U.S. break up are behind Vermont or another state or city or locality movements.

Of course, the United States keeps supporting some nations becoming independent of others – like Kosovo and Taiwan and Darfur and sub-national states of Iran - including through secret monetary donations. How could “the Union” complain if Vermont Republic and Cascadia Independence and Secession.Net and LaRaza or some new Republic of Malcom X’s coffers suddenly became very fat from thousands of $100 cash donations mailed from American cities?Not likely to happen, but those “conspiracy theorists” in the U.S. government have to protect their union. And you wondered why they are trying to crush the cash society and go to all-electronic money that they can trace - and cut off - at will?