On Secession

As much as I love the idea of secession, of people in a given territory breaking political ties with the larger territorial state, there is one major drawback: secession dissenters within the seceding territory being forced to break ties with the old state and live under the new state. Many “loyalists” were murdered and/or driven from their property because they dared to dissent American secession from Great Britain. That’s a horrible injustice and quite unlibertarian. It amounts to the conquest of the dissenters by the new political order, the new state, and is as much an attack on innocent people (those not participating in the state’s crimes, anyway) as is the preservation of the status quo. When has secession historically not amounted to this? What’s one who values life and liberty to make of it? And that’s today’s two cents.

Skyler.