Tag Archives: sucession

Break Up the USA, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr

The centrifugal forces of decentralization and organic adaptation grow ever stronger, a point made by SLL in “You Say You Want a Devolution?” Why not break up the USA, there’s not reason set in stone why the US has to be united and presided over by a monstrous blob of a central government. From Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. at lewrockwell.com:

Some of our assumptions are so deeply embedded that we cannot perceive them ourselves.

Case in point: everyone takes for granted that it’s normal for a country of 320 million to be dictated to by a single central authority. The only debate we’re permitted to have is who should be selected to carry out this grotesque and inhumane function.

Here’s the debate we should be having instead: what if we simply abandoned this quixotic mission, and went our separate ways? It’s an idea that’s gaining traction – much too late, to be sure, but better late than never.

For a long time it seemed as if the idea of secession was unlikely to take hold in modern America. Schoolchildren, after all, are told to associate secession with slavery and treason. American journalists treat the idea as if it were self-evidently ridiculous and contemptible (an attitude they curiously do not adopt when faced with US war propaganda, I might add).

And yet all it took was the election of Donald Trump for the alleged toxicity of secession to vanish entirely. The left’s principled opposition to secession and devotion to the holy Union went promptly out the window on November 8, 2016. Today, about one in three Californians polled favors the Golden State’s secession from the Union.

In other words, some people seem to be coming to the conclusion that the whole system is rotten and should be abandoned.

To continue reading: Break Up the USA

Is Catalonia About to Go All In? by Don Quijones

On September 27, the Catalonia region of Spain will conduct a vote its premier has dubbed a de facto vote on secession from Spain. The richest province in a country breaking away is not a precedent the powers that be in Europe want to occur. The threats have not been veiled. From Don Quijones, at wolfstreet.com:

For a nation that doesn’t officially exist, Catalonia sure knows how to throw a national-day party. September 11, approximately 1.4 million people filled the streets of the region’s capital, Barcelona (urban population: 1.6 million), to commemorate La Diada, the fateful day 301 years ago when Catalonia was defeated during the War of the Spanish Succession.

This year’s event was widely praised, even among some unionists, for its near flawless organization, and once again the atmosphere was one of peaceful joviality, resolute defiance and collective hope.

Here are some photos I took in the evening after the march, at an event held in our neighborhood. In the first one, you can see a Castellers (human tower):

In the second one you can see the “Arc de Triomf” in the background, with a massive independence flag swaying in the breeze:

But now the festivities are over, and the really hard work of nation building begins. Hope, catchy slogans, and huge demonstrations alone are not enough to create a new nation.

Institutions of State

A nation needs a viable economy, which Catalonia already has; it needs international acceptance and recognition, which could be a much higher mountain to climb, especially given the threat posed by separatist movements in other European countries (France, Italy, the UK, Belgium); and it needs the basic organs and institutions of state. According to Catalonia’s premier, Artur Mas, these are now under development.

One crucial task for the next government will be to create the state structures that will succeed those of the Spanish state: the tax authority, for example, which we have already worked on for the past year and a half, or social security or the central bank,” he told the Financial Times.

In other words, it seems that Catalonia’s pro-independence coalition is now moving inexorably from the realm of fanciful words to the realm of determined action. Mas and his colleagues believe that for Catalonia to be a sovereign nation state, it needs its own central bank – which is probably true – but preferably one affiliated with the European Central Bank (ECB).

To continue reading: Is Catalonia About to Go All In?