“The Anatomy of the State” is arguably Murray Rothbard’s most famous essay. At one point in the essay he quotes one of his favorite American political philosophers, John C. Calhoun. In particular, he praises Calhoun’s theory of the “concurrent majority, according to which a segment of the population, for example the citizens of one of the free, independent, and sovereign states, could veto or nullify what they believed to be an unconstitutional federal law. Knowing that states had this power, the theory goes, federal politicians would be less likely to pass unconstitutional legislation in the first place.
But there is a problem with Calhoun’s theory, said Rothbard; ‘[W]hy stop with the states,” he wrote. “Why not place veto power in counties, cities, wards? . . . . Calhoun does not push his pathbreaking theory . . . far enough: he does not push it down to the individual himself . . . . just as the right of nullification for a state logically implies its right of secession, so a right of individual nullification would imply the right of any individual to ‘secede’ from the State under which he lives.” (Scroll down about half way to paragraph 37)
Thus, Murray Rothbard (“Mr. Libertarian”) viewed secession from centralized power (and the threat thereof) as an essential ingredient of a free society. The central idea of secession is the essence of political freedom and freedom of association.
Abraham Lincoln took the exact opposite view and championed monopolistic, centralized power over all the people, with no possible escape route, ever. As he said in his first inaugural address; “[W]hy may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? . . . . Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.”
Moreover, anyone who disagrees with this brand new, never-heard-of-before theory, said Lincoln, “does of necessity fly to anarchy and despotism.” (Paragraphs 23, 24). Earlier in the same speech Lincoln threatened “invasion” and “bloodshed” in any state whose citizens did not agree with his novel, new theory of the “Perpetual” American union.
Thus, according to Lincoln, a union held together with threats of invasion, mass murder, and bloodshed, along the lines of the twentieth-century Soviet Union, is the essence of freedom, whereas a voluntary union along the lines of the original American union of the founders is the essence of anarchy and despotism.
I prefer the Rothbardian view of secession myself.
7:03 pm on July 17, 2015
