My old friend and former “American Conservative” editor Dan McCarthy gets it all wrong about Donald Trump’s “national security” tariffs on aluminum and steel.
Tag: secession
Entanglements
I’ve just been listening to a BBC report about the reconciliation of BREXIT to the supposed desires of Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the EU, and the UK. Sorry, but I have to say “I told you so.”
Consent of the Governed, Revisited
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” This sounds good, especially if one doesn’t think about it very hard or very long, but the harder and longer one thinks about it, the more problematic it becomes.
Lysander Spooner Quote #21
By my reading, Spooner is opposed to “quanto-cracy” in any form. There are no mathematical paths to freedom, except those dealing with the individual’s voluntary relationship with each other individual, directly, in their scope of action.
Secession / Unification
Nobody asked but … I know how I feel relative to the problem in Catalonia. I favor Catalonian Independence. But it makes me really examine how I feel about separatist situations in general. I look first at the situation with the province of Ulster in Ireland, a province that was broken out and retained by…
Is Secession by Referendum Libertarian?
My concerns about group (not individual) secession are over the process of peaceful separation, namely, the referendum. Libertarians have long criticized political democracy — that is, the settling of “public” matters by majority vote either directly or through so-called representatives — as inherently violative of individual rights. By what authority does a majority lord it over a minority? Well, doesn’t this critique apply to referenda on secession?
Voluntary Law and Order
People are not all the same, and they make different choices because they have different values, circumstances, and levels of understanding. Sometimes those choices are peaceful and wise; sometimes they are not. So what are the best ways to promote good choices and cooperation while preventing and providing resolution for conflict?
Ireland #3
Ireland is under the radar. So the nation quietly approaches over our shoulders. Ireland never meant to set the world on fire, it meant only to expel interlopers. Ireland and the Irish people are content with what they have been dealt … which has become quite a lot, actually.
On Independence
Why do we call acts of political secession independence? When we speak of these things, we do so from the perspective of “the people” in contrast to the state. From whence lies the dependence of which we are now independent?
Self-Governance, Rationality, and Secession
Contemplation is a form of internal emigration or mental secession, and every contemplative knows how valuable it can be for the life of the mind. Libertarian secession – a striving for full sovereignty over one’s private property and the physical space delimited by it – is a natural extension of the contemplative impulse from the realm of pure throught to the realm of action.