Bad luck continues to haunt me - including breaking my arm on black ice on Lincoln’s birthday... hmmm. Tight, 15 pound casts can really suck out one’s energy - and one handed typing pretty tiring too! But tonight I decided if I really believe in surviving through seceding, I should at least keep cracking through a blog entry.

This is a continuation of my previous entry on “Secession and Sectarianism.” It details two important antidotes to the problem of sectarian conflict among secessionists - Liberty and Democracy.

LIBERTY

Liberty is personal and political independence and freedom of choice. Libertarians define it as the right to do what you want as long as you do not harm others. This is similar to the “Golden Rule” of most religions: “Do (or ‘Do Not Do’) Unto Others.” Liberty is a “live and let live” personal philosophy and a political philosophy of organizing human society on principles of voluntary association.

In politics this means that individual consent is the only legitimate basis of any organization, including government. Not racial, religious, tribal or other “collectivist” affiliation. And not some ideological construct like a “social contract.” In the light of liberty, bigoted sectarianism is down graded from major motivator to the mere choice of individuals with very narrow world views.

Political liberty includes the primacy of the right to secession, for individuals - where they can make it work - and to communities, counties, towns and cities. Radical political decentralists assume these would then form (usually overlapping) regional, continental and even worldwide alliances, networks and confederations based on specific needs, interests and goals. (Read more at my site Secession.Net.)

Nation state propagandists rail against the “medieval world” of small city states. Mass media portrays Wild West, inner city and post-apocalyptic “anarchy” scenarios that frighten many into believing that secession will lead to a multiplicity of petty tyrannies where armed bullies enslave everyone else. Therefore secessionists must assure people that they respect their liberty, that all associations will be voluntarily, strict bills of rights will be created, and that goals will be achieved nonviolently - preferably in writing.

Secessionists may not intend to wait for even a majority of those in their communities or regions or states to support secession. However, they must reassure the public that new political entities will be formed through voluntary alliances, not by forceful inclusion or driving off unwanted people and confiscation of their property. Let us always assure non-secessionists that those who want to retain citizenship in the nation state, obey its laws and pay its taxes may do so, even if many or most of their neighbors secede.

We always must emphasize written “Bills of Rights.” These should include freedom of association, free movement in and out of political entities, equal member rights to participate in community decision-making, procedural rights in criminal and civil cases and, of course, no cruel and unusual means of interrogation or punishment.

Too many secessionist movements worldwide have been violent ones. And even minor violence by secessionist groups often is met by over whelming central government violence that also harms innocent citizens. Therefore the urge by some to “prove their manhood” through revolutionary violence must be opposed. And let’s not forget, we are heading back into a new age of government infiltrators and violent provocateurs!

I recommend a thorough study of nonviolent action methods and a very public commitment to practicing nonviolence. Like Gandhi, I think an equally important goal is creating institutions committed to using conflict resolution and nonviolent enforcement of laws and contracts.

It’s useful to emphasize examples of peaceful secession, like in the break up of the Soviet Union into many independent republics, of Czechoslovakia into two independent republics, etc. Note that the Soviet Union actually had the right to secession of republics in its constitution.

DEMOCRACY

To me, “democracy” (from the Greek "rule by the people”) means giving every member who shares the groups’ overall goals a way to participate equally in group decision making. And I believe representative, majority rule “democracy” does nothing of the sort.

In small organizations, and even more so in large ones and in government, majoritarian representation lead inevitably to de facto minority rule. Wealthy and/or well-organized elites and special interests know who to fund, who to elect, who to pressure, who to pay, in order to get their way. And all it takes is a small minority of members or citizens to elect a representative who may be among a mere quorum of representatives voting by a bare majority to pass any number of liberty-denying laws. Reformists’ tweaks cannot fix these majoritarian and representative structural flaws.

We need direct democracy that only permits laws to be passed if they are voted on by a large percentage of citizens. And then only if a large majority of them approve it. If 80 per cent of 80 per cent of the public is necessary to approve a law, few special interest laws even will be proposed, not to mention passed.

I myself have a long and generally positive experience with direct and consensus-oriented democratic groups starting with anti-nuclear organizing in the 1970s and early 1980s, then Green/bioregional organizing in the 1980s and early 1990s, and finally peace organizing since 1997. I have seen the “tyranny of structurelessness.” But I’ve seen far more tyranny in structured organizations, from anti-globalization “spokes councils” to loosely structured coalitions to Robert Rules of Order run groups with carefully structured constitutions. I have seen all turn into clique dominated autocracies, reinforcing the idea that giving away one’s power leaves one powerless.

However, I remain hopeful that constitutions combining direct, consensus-oriented democracy with simple and effective process rules can minimize the damage done by special interests, cliques and opportunistic apparatchiks. And our “revolutionary” organizations can be models of the political organizations we create in the future.

Democracy has to start in our own secessionist organizations. Leftists and liberals know this better than libertarians who tend to gather in hierarchical organizations and then complain about their leadership ad nauseam. Many dream of an ideal privatized society run by contracts, but I remind them that even such societies will run into unexpected problems that require some form of group decision-making. And I note that because political change organizations rely on volunteer effort, letting volunteers make the important decisions is an excellent way to convince them to do all that free work! With hundreds of thousands of seasoned libertarian activists already committed to the right to secession, getting them on to both the secessionist and the democratic process band wagon is critical.

Finally, good democratic decision-making must applied to issues of bigotry and sectarianism in secession movements. Each group must create or adopt clear principles about what is destructive bigotry, discrimination and sectarianism as opposed to what is legitimate free association and discriminating choice; what are legitimate complaints and what are trumped up and disruptive charges; how much time and energy to devote to researching and judging accusations, to reacting against outside attacks and inside divisions, etc. Otherwise those who would divide and conquer us on the bigotry and sectarianism issues will win.