Bruce Levine: In today's world, how realistic is the idea of secession?

Kirkpatrick Sale: Well, in today's world, that's what's
happening. The break-up of the Soviet Union, the break-up of
Yugoslavia (continuing even now with Montenegro and Kosovo), devolution
of powers in the United Kingdom, regional autonomy in Spain for the
Basques and Catalans – all this points to the collapse of old-fashioned
nationalism and the rise of regionalism. Just look at what's
happened in the last 60 years – the United Nations started with 51
nations in 1945, now has grown to 193 nations.

But if you mean how realistic is it in North America, that's another
issue. There are in fact a dozen nascent secessionist/separatist
movements existing at present, from Hawaii and Alaska and Quebec to
Vermont and Dixieland and Puerto Rico, and every day it's more and more
obvious that the United States is a deeply divided nation that simply
doesn't function well as a totality. And every day the Bush
cronies' bumbling and illegal antics in service to the empire make
secession more attractive and the desire to leave this corrupt system
stronger.

Is it even possible for the U.S., as a nation state of 300 million
people, to have anything close to genuine democracy? Is this a more
fundamental problem than George W. Bush, and is that why you are
talking about secession?

KS: Nail on the head. At the conference in the fall of 2004 where
we issued the Middlebury Declaration, calling for serious consideration
of separatism and secession in this country, we went through a long
process of looking at the alternatives for political action. We
began by rejecting liberalism and reformism as being insignificant –
any reforms by the Democrats would do nothing to substantially change
the system or its course and are useless because if you got them they
would be ignored or buried under by the powers-that-be. And, as you
suggest, if one is interested in real democracy – participatory
democracy, as we used to say – and true power at a local level, it is
impossible to achieve that in a nation of 300 million people. Think of
it: our system is so skewed that members of the House of
Representatives are charged with representing the views of, on average,
643,000 people. You can't reform that, you can only ditch it.
Then we went on to consider rebellion and revolution, which we rejected
as being essentially impossible, faced with a government that is weak
and foolish in many respects but has a lot of power in its police and
military, and wouldn't hesitate to use them viciously and recklessly.

So then, what alternatives are available if one wants to escape from a
corrupt and evil empire – more corrupt and evil now perhaps than at
some times past, but always so by its very nature, as are all empires –
and feels called upon to try to change that empire? Emigration is
possible, I guess, but it won't do anything to change the
monster. So that leaves secession. That is a way to
establish an independent state no longer tied to the empire and its
global reach, to create a moral distance from the perceived evil, to
create some form of real democracy at a smaller scale, to be able to
establish a whole new range and set of policies to make life better and
more honorable. And in some way – more morally or
philosophically than politically, perhaps – to weaken the empire,
particularly in the eyes of the world.

How can the U.S. governmental-corporate partnership not feel threatened
by any kind of secession? And if threatened, won't they become violent,
both economically and militarily?

KS: That depends on a lot of things. First, of course, the timing
and the mood of the nation when a secessionist state emerges. If it is
prepared for with a careful campaign, telling the nation and the world
why it is seceding, why it wants independence, then it might make it
politically impossible for Washington to react with force. It would
also depend on the perceived nature of the federal government at the
time; if it is as corrupt, illegal, and inept as the present
administration, it would not have much moral authority and would not
likely be supported by national public opinion in mounting a violent
attack. Also, if it is clear that secession represents the wishes of
the great majority of citizens in that state it would be even more
difficult to launch an attack, to get popular support for it in the
rest of the nation.

And if it is also clear that the case can be made that secession is
legal – the Constitution in fact says nothing about secession, you
know, and as Confederate states were seceding in 1861 Congress
considered an amendment forbidding it, which means that it wasn't
prohibited in the first place – then national and world opinion would
likely be on the side of the secessionists. Of course that didn't stop
Lincoln, who showed that states will be punished if they try to secede,
but it didn't establish a legal case, and the legal, not to mention
moral, argument for the right to secede remains strong.

It is not fantastic, then, to imagine that instead of a futile war,
Washington would be willing to negotiate a settlement. At least some
Vermonters think so. That way Washington might be able to establish
diplomatic and trade ties that would allow it to still use some of the
resources and talents of the new state, with the additional benefit of
no longer having to maintain federal offices, regulators, highways,
parks, dams, and such, and even presumably with a negotiated fee in
compensation for these lost assets.
Another element in the mix would be an appeal by the seceding state to
the rest of the world for support, with statements that these countries
would not look kindly on a federal effort to crush the secession
militarily. Particularly those nations that themselves have been
created by secession – Norway, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, and a number of others – would be asked to support the
secession effort. And in the case of Vermont, where the secession
movement has already made contact with other nations (and asked for
membership in the international Unrepresented Peoples and Nations
Organization), they would count on support from their Quebec neighbors
and the separatists there.
All in all, I think you could reasonably plan on a peaceable secession,
if you did the legal and diplomatic groundwork carefully enough.
Though you still might want to keep your powder dry.

What about the argument that a large centralized power is necessary for
defense and for a healthy economy? Don't you contend the opposite is
true, that gigantic nation states invite catastrophic war and,
ultimately, economic disaster?

KS: Well, yes, you've answered the question.

In the first place, there is no question about the fate of
empires. They are inherently unstable because they must control
both populations on the periphery and populations at home, and that
leads to increasing repression, increasing discontent, and increasing
fragility. Every empire in history has ended in multiple wars,
mounting civil discontent, economic collapse, and environmental
retribution – and the American empire will be no different.

Second, history also shows that big nations create big wars. That’s
what Randolph Bourne meant by "war is the health of the state."
Small nations also sometimes create wars, but as Leopold Kohr shows in
The Breakdown of Nations – and as I chart in Human Scale – they do so
less often and the wars are also small.

Besides – what “defense”? Who is the Pentagon defending us from,
exactly? There are no nations that are going to attack us in the
foreseeable future. After all, we have a military system larger than
the rest of the world's put together. The only attacks we're
likely to suffer are terrorist attacks, for which of course we are wide
open, and the government shows no signs of being able to defend us from
those. In fact, because we have created the biggest single
bureaucracy in the world to try to defend us with "homeland security,"
we've created a lumbering, inefficient, costly machine that can't even
keep bombs from landing at our ports or make our chemical plants safe
from attack. Surely a small state would be able to be far more
adept and efficient at protecting itself, as the example of Switzerland
shows us tellingly.

War is the health of the state -- and so is vast unequal wealth.
In the face of that, doesn't secession seem to make a lot of sense?

Are you comfortable with people labeling you as an anarchist or a libertarian socialist?

KS: I regard myself as an anarchocommunalist, which is too big a label
for anyone actually to use – but it simply means I am an anarchist who
wants to see society organized on a small, human scale, based on
self-determining communities. That is the basic principle behind
secession. Although nowadays, that more often focuses on states
(Vermont, Alaska) or multi-state regions (Cascadia, Aztlan), it could
apply as well to bioregions and communities.

As to "libertarian socialist," I have no idea of what that means.
"Libertarian" is a label hijacked by the decentralist Right, and
"socialist" is a leftover of the authoritarian Left. It's not me.

In my day job as a clinical psychologist I see many people who have
remained with uncaring, cruel, and dishonest spouses or employers –
this resulting in a loss of self-respect that renders them too weak to
extricate from these abusive relationships. Similarly, I’ve found that
many people already know the truth that they are living in a
dehumanizing society that cares nothing for autonomy, community, and
meaningfulness, but that they are too weakened to take any kind of
direct action. When a person is so beaten down, merely seeing the
truth does not set them free, so I believe that a good therapist or
activist must take that psychological reality into account and help
create healthy energy. Have you found that simply having the balls to
bring up the topic of secession creates such an energy? And where
can people who are energized by talk of secession make contact with
like-minded others and gain even more strength through mutual support
and cooperative action?

KS: I certainly have found that the idea of secession resonates with
quite a number of people – not all; some think it’s plain nutsy –
because it’s something that actually seems doable to them. Once
you reject acquiescence and reform and revolution as political
responses to the empire, there's not a lot left, and that's why
secession has the legs it has, why there are people in all parts of the
country, the continent, talking about it. Why I'm having a
convention this fall [the First North American Secessionist Convention
was in Burlington, Vermont, November 2006, the second in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, October 2007] to bring people together to examine it,
perhaps to foster it.

As for getting connected and supported, there's nothing but the
old-fashioned way: put up a flag and see who salutes. A handful
of people in Vermont began with a press release and a meeting, and now
the Second Vermont Republic is a recognized force in the state, and
there are marches, a newspaper, meetings in the state capital,
and so on. Put the idea of secession out there – a letter, an
e-mail, a press release, a pamphlet, a speech – and see who responds.

It certainly makes a lot more sense than trying to make change by
voting or writing your senator or marching and demonstrating or sitting
around pissing and moaning. It is logical, sensible, practical…
and it just might work.