Written by Pax Hyde
Election season 2016 has many Americans feeling pessimistic about the prospects of politics in the near future. The frontrunners on both sides are negatively perceived by significant sections of their party, Clinton for her ingenuousness and Trump for his populism (read: racism). Sanders and Cruz are the purists of the presidential race, yet their isolated positions at the extremes of American policy have yet to prove widely palatable to voters.
Candidates are differentiated more so by their strengths than their flaws, real or imagined, indicating that the electorate is not doing as much careful consideration as mudslinging, trying to prove over and over again to themselves that the candidate they have put their faith in is in fact the best logical choice. Such is the intensity of this rhetorical crossfire that I imagine many Americans wish for a more homogeneous community where such irreconcilable polarization could not have infiltrated. An idea that might appeal to these people is secession.
Despite the informal defeat of the possibility of secession with the end of the Civil War, there are corners of America where the spirit of self-determination remains strong. As long as Washington imposes its federal authority on individual states, there will be resistance. Two states that have significant secessionist inclinations are Texas and Vermont, though these movements have very different visions for their futures.
The modern Texas secession movement seems to be based on the common Southern resentment of federal authority that began in the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. Before its annexation into the Union in 1845, Texas was an independent republic and has emphasized this fact as a significant part of its identity since. Today, the state’s tourism slogan is “Texas. It’s like a whole other country.” Yet it is difficult to imagine the U.S. without Texas or Texas as independent. Our identity as a greater nation is so closely related to their ideals of freedom and self-determination that it would be a gross misrepresentation to suggest that those identities were not constructed in conjunction with one another. There can be no libertarian without a socialist, no anarchist without a state.
Legally, the argument for Texan secession is the same as all other libertarian thought. Texas nationalists push for secession on the grounds that the federal government has overstepped its specific duties outlined in the Constitution, and in doing so erased much of the decision-making powers of the people in their own state communities. Even those who do not lean towards libertarianism should see the validity and necessity of this argument in that it provides necessary resistance to the natural inclination of the federal government to expand its power. This power should be limited because states are too large and diverse to have a single agreed-upon moral identity. For the vast majority, life is lived on a local scale.
Yet the issue with a totally libertarian government is that there is no clear proof that less government is more efficient or improves the wellbeing of individuals. Less regulation results in less careful and deliberate allocation and conservation of resources. Less taxation means less pay for government officials and therefore more time and money lost in the inefficiencies and bribery of corrupt bureaucracy. Though following the law comes at a slight cost to the individual, the collective benefit gained from cooperation is enormous.
Though on the opposite end of the political spectrum, the secessionist movement in Vermont bears many resemblances to that of Texas. Vermont also claimed to be an independent state before being annexed into the Union, and so the culture is steeped in a similar attitude of self-determination. The secessionist grievances against the federal government have the same implication, which is that Washington does not use its power in line with the will of the people. The only great difference from Texas is that, in remedy, Vermonters promote an unabashedly socialist form of government modeled on small Northern European nations such as Denmark and Switzerland.
While the libertarianism of the Texan secession movement seems to be overly confident in the ability of the citizens to cooperate, the Vermont movement errs in the opposite direction. They are excessively pessimistic in that they have no hope for the current government, and nihilistic in that they feel no responsibility to try to fix it. Their wish is to be allowed to retreat into the homogeneity of their state communities.
In emphasizing the peoples’ right to self-determination, secessionist movements forget the great opportunities that are facilitated by the Union. By making minor concessions of freedom, we can collectively make great gains. But the idea of secessionism will always appeal to us as Americans because self-determination and questioning authority is in our history and therefore in our nature. Although we aspire to be an efficient, productive government that accurately reflects our will, we must work to improve the one that we already have. By retreating into our own beliefs and rejecting others wholesale, we build nothing but our own ego.