How Likely is Secession?

The fact is that today our federal government is acting out in many deleterious ways, and yet there still seems to be no appetite for a plan as radical as secession in our country. Few call for it as a response to our increasingly regulated society, or even as a desire for separating in order to seek a better government.

There are a lot of people who are angry and upset at what our government is doing to us, but that does not seem to be translating into a desire to extricate themselves from this dilemma. No, we carry on pretty much as normal, while the country just keeps going downhill. 

And given that the demographics and voting patterns of our country are changing for the worse, and we are electing more and more socialists to the highest offices of the land, wouldn’t it seem that secession is even less likely than ever? Why would the increasingly blue states be interested in actually leaving the golden goose that is Washington D.C.? It would only be the reddest states that would, and they aren’t raising a peep. 

So, obviously, we are nowhere near secession in this country. If we can’t even garner a mass protest in our Tahir Square - D.C. - much less to pass a flat tax, we do not have the will to foment a secessionist movement. 

But what about that smaller population that would like to see it happen?Two things - one is that those people are spread throughout the states, and only a state, not a bunch of disparate people, could actually claim to secede. The other is that their motivations are also a mix - some are anarchists or communists, and would like to break off for reasons other than a truly free and capitalist society. 

But taking only those that want a freer society, the question is: How could they possibly organize and get a state (or states) to actually secede? The only way it could happen is if a large number of people who were fed up with our government actually moved to one of several states that already had a large conservative population, enabling that state (or states) to create a movement towards secession. 

It would essentially be the Free-State Project, but with the purpose of eventually breaking off from America and forging their own country. Otherwise, I cannot fathom how there will ever be a true secessionist movement in our country - not in any state of the union, much less in dozens of them (which would be necessary in order to have a large enough power base to oppose the federal government). 

But what if things got worse - much worse? What if our government took a real turn towards dictatorship and either began confiscating our property (real and/or financial), or allowed “the poor” to violently take our homes and land from us, as in Zimbabwe. At what point will people with property actually stand up to fight the plundering of wealth from them? At what point will they stand up to try to recover a country that functions on the rule of law when it has already descended into the rule of men? 

Or will it take a single act, such as an Executive Order outlawing all firearms and ammunition from private hands? That might get people up in arms, and there may even be a bit of a revolution over it, but I don’t see even that causing people to run for a new border. 

And yet, a real threat of secession would have been one of our best ways to limit an out of control federal government. Imagine if 20 or 25 states banded together and forged a declaration that said: “If you don’t limit your bad behaviors and reform yourself, and if you don’t make these changes to our relationship and how our country is governed, we will declare our independence from all of you idiots, and begin anew, without you.”

Certainly secession is possible, but in assessing the mood of the country today, even with such depredations as we have experienced lately, it looks like it is not going to happen anytime soon. 

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