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Oct. 20, 2017 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
15:58
Secede or Concede To Empire - That's The Choice

Power despises independence. Whenever a region or state tries to break away, the larger power usually attacks. That's how the U.S. was formed, by breaking away. It was subsequently attacked for daring to do so. Secession is a valuable tool for Liberty. Secede! Secede! Secede! ... All the way to the ultimate dilution of power -- Individual Liberty.

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Secession and the Pursuit of Power 00:12:41
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Co-host today is Chris Rossini.
Chris, welcome to our program.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
Good.
Good to have you with us.
And for the audience, today our subject is slightly different than what our average program is about because we spend a lot of time on economic policy and a lot of time on foreign policy.
This is a little bit different.
This is almost in a category of political science.
But I find it interesting.
It's been in the news.
There's been a little discussion going on.
Libertarians are debating the issue.
And that has to do with secession.
Is secession good or bad?
Is it always good or always bad?
Or what is the story?
So I find it a fascinating issue.
And we'll be talking about this today.
And overall, throughout my lifetime thinking about politics, I always liked secession.
I think it's a good idea, even without thinking further along about that, because just because I've had an abhorrence of big government, thinking big government is the opposite of secession.
Secession takes us in a different direction, which I think is very good.
But there's some arguments made and say, well, secession isn't always good.
Just once in a while it's good.
But you know, just to start off, I think secession is great.
That doesn't mean that every notion of secession has to be carried through because sometimes it's very dangerous and nothing good comes of it.
But I think one big mistake the founders made was not dealing with the issue of secession.
They should have made it very clear that they were coming together, which they believe, the states believed this.
They were coming together voluntarily and the assumption was they could leave voluntarily, which wasn't the case.
A president by the name of Lincoln reversed that.
But just that being in the Constitution doesn't mean that we'd have had secession all these years, but it would have served a very good purpose even if people didn't secede, because it would always be a threat to the big government when they overstep their bounds, which they do constantly, that we find out that there would be restraints just because they would be fearful that the states would tooth them.
They would respond.
So I think just the threat of secession would be very beneficial.
But there are times where secession, I think, is very important, and we can talk a little bit about that.
I'm sure, Chris, you've thought about this issue a little bit.
So what are your thoughts?
Yes, it's important to point out that we're not saying that this is the libertarian position.
Everybody has to think this way.
I mean, we happen to come down on the same side on this.
And a lot of it has to do with the nature of power.
Power is rapacious.
It always wants more, more land, more people for wars, more brain power, more money.
It never ends.
It's never satisfied.
So the concentration of power is a great enemy of liberty.
And it's always, even today, we see it's always for bigger and bigger structures globally.
They want global, total surveillance over everyone and everything.
That's like the ultimate power for these people.
So secession throws a monkey wrench into the whole project.
Breaking away, breaking away, making things smaller.
And that's why we're both big supporters of the idea.
Yeah.
And, you know, there's a couple motivations involved.
One is the power that you talk about because the state always wants to retain power.
And they do that by force.
If anybody suggests they're leaving, you know, the Spanish government is not exactly happy with the government of Caledonia now because they don't want to see that happening.
But there's always a reason behind it.
Sometimes it isn't necessarily, well, we're seceding because we're going to have a libertarian society.
But the people who want to keep it there and expand and annex territory by force or fraud, they have one goal, and that is power.
But I think our secession from the British, when we left the British Empire, I think it was more philosophic.
I mean, the founders had a profound understanding about liberty, so that was a strong motivation, and they defended it on principle.
So that, to me, was a very strong defense of secession.
And today, you know, when they talk about secession, we're not sure.
I think it's a rebellion against big government and intrusiveness.
They don't talk a whole lot about Caledonia, but there's a taxing problem there.
They're very productive, and they claim that they're being taxed more than they get, which is very often the case.
If you take our 50 states, there are a few states that pay a lot more in than they get.
But when you start measuring the regulations you get and the difficulties with the financial system and the inflation that is created by the federal government, all of a sudden, you know, there's a big cost to this.
So I think it's very healthy to think about breaking up a system.
I see the breakup of the Soviet Union a form of secession.
How could anybody be opposed to the breaking up of the Soviet Union?
And yet George Bush Sr. was opposed to that.
He said, oh, it might cause chaos.
Well, there was a little bit of chaos, but what were the Soviets' dictators doing?
They were causing a little bit of chaos too.
I think the stronger the central government, the more dictatorial it will be.
The smaller the government, the better.
I don't see Switzerland really suffering the consequences of having independent cantons, the states, and they're not yelling and screaming about secession.
But then again, they're not moving in the direction of dictatorial power like it moves.
I mean, right now, not only will our government become and has become more dictatorial, we find out that globalism is a big deal.
And of course, the big fear, and we mentioned this in the title, is empire.
You know, you keep moving in this one direction, and that is empire.
And we've been involved in expansion ever since our country started.
And when you think of our spreading our government and our wings, you know, at the beginning, we did it expanding our borders, manifest destiny.
Today, it's gone way overboard with that because even though we don't march the troops in and maintain every country, we do use force, we do use the CIA, we do use special forces, and we do use the financial markets and the strength of the dollar.
And that is an empire, and that only can be done by a very strong government.
And most Americans think, well, that's good.
We're strong and we're the boss and we have the benefits.
I think there's some downside to that.
Yes, and you make a great point about the bigger state attacking the breakaway state.
That is, I mean, power despises independence and breakaways because it loses resources, people for wars, money.
So their gut instinct is to attack.
And the British attacked America.
We see in Catalonia what's happening with this Spanish and even the Kurds in Iraq trying to break away and the tanks are all then.
They want to maintain their control because secession dilutes power.
And that's why, from a perspective of liberty, we want secession all the way down to the sovereign individual.
You know, that's the ultimate dilution of power, free individuals.
So, but if, let's say that Catalonia isn't going to be a libertarian heaven and they really have a bad government even after they break away, well, that doesn't have to be the end game.
There could be a breakaway region within Catalonia that can say, you know what, we've had enough of it.
And at least the trend is now going to smaller states, to smaller areas instead of globalism.
You know, and I think another analogy to that is that we can't know exactly what will happen once these countries leave.
Every country that separated themselves from the Soviet Union didn't become a libertarian state, but I think the conditions became much better.
Unfortunately, NATO and some other groups grew in strength too.
But I think you can make this analogous to the fact that we want freedom for the individuals.
And most I think essentially all libertarians should agree with that.
The individual owns his life.
He should have access to the fruits of his labor.
He should be allowed to lead his life as he chooses and believe what he wants as long as he doesn't use force.
But people don't sit around and say, well, we can't do that.
We can't give liberty to people.
The liberals always argued with me in Congress.
You can't do that because they won't take care of themselves.
They'll be out on the streets, and then we'll have to buy them food and build a house and give them medical care.
So they had no confidence and felt that the use of government force had to be used to solve those problems.
But we don't back off and say, well, we can't provide liberty for the individual because the individual might be irresponsible.
And this is sort of, I think that's similar to the argument, well, we can't endorse secession is because some of them might be controlled by the people and they might go in the wrong direction.
And I think the argument is smaller is better because if the state becomes the enemy, and I do believe the state basically is the enemy to liberty, and I am also convinced when it comes to foreign policy, it is the powerful state and the issue of expanding territory, in the issue of empire, that motivates war.
We've got to go fight for our oil and natural resources and we need more land.
And they're always using force to do this.
And I think that's where the tremendous danger is, is that the force and the loss of liberty occurs.
But then again, I would concede, as you have, that we don't know exactly what will come of a seceding nation if they go off and do it.
I love the idea that our secession in 1776 was led in a philosophic way.
I think that is great.
I think also a qualification should be, for me personally, so I don't know when you draw the lines, but I like the nonviolent type.
I don't think I'm going to be leading the charge and say, well, we need to secede.
We're going to have a militia.
We're going to attack the forces up in Washington.
And Texas is going to secede.
That was attempted.
And all of a sudden, we found out how determined the state was to suppress the secession of the South from the North.
And 700,000 Americans died as to make an example and to permanently ingrain in our system that don't even think about it.
And that is bad.
And it's just too bad.
It's not in our Constitution that we have this right to do it.
And I think intellectually we should always argue for that.
and maybe someday somebody will propose a constitutional amendment that really legalizes that.
And the other thought I have about this, and this might be a little bit glib, but we have all this force preventing the secession.
But what about some people that want to secede and they're not allowed to, and it'll be good for them too.
What if we decided that if 49 states voted to put somebody out, kick them out of the organization, but if they agreed to this in the Constitution, that if everybody agreed that you don't belong, maybe we will expel you from our Confederation.
That's not a practical suggestion, but it's a good principle because I don't think, you know, I don't hear the discussion too much for those who sort of want to be more cautious than we are about secession.
I wonder what they would do with California.
My immediate reaction is, I don't think it's going to be violent.
I think it'd be pretty neat because even if they became very socialistic, which they already are, maybe it would be, let it turn into Zimbabwe.
Secession Dreams 00:03:04
There's a big message in Zimbabwe and Venezuela and what happened to the Soviet system.
It's this failure that the image comes back and we have to have something new.
And of course, I work on the assumption that that failure of this system is coming.
And that's why I think this issue of smaller government and independence should be alive and well, and we should talk about it.
Yep.
And for my final word, Dr. Paul, you know, the main horrors that we saw over the last century, they were the product of giant states, World War I, World War II.
Hundreds of millions of dead.
Small groups of government can't pull something like that off.
That's a major, major governments can only do that.
So, and what did they do after each one?
They tried to consolidate into even bigger governments with the League of Nations after World War I and finally in the UN, which actually stuck after World War II.
So they're going into bigger and bigger structures.
And the bigger the structure of government is, the further the idea of liberty becomes.
It becomes a distant memory and buried from view.
I mean, how are you going to succeed when your government is located in Brussels or some part of the world that you don't even know where it is?
It's much easier to think of seceding from a small town or a small government.
The idea of liberty is there.
It could be understandable.
So I say secede, secede.
It should be a tradition everywhere, all the way down to free individuals.
Well, let me close with bringing up one more issue on here, and that's patriotism.
They use patriotism in many different ways to support wars and the empire.
But there's a patriotic desire.
Well, you can't break up America.
America is sacred.
We can build and we can invade and we can add to the empire.
But you don't break up America.
That's unpatriotic.
And I think that, you know, there's always been a secessionist sentiment in Texas.
Texas needs to secede, you know, get out of this thing.
And it's there.
But also in Texas, there's another sentiment which is very interesting because there was, you know, when Texas joined the Union, they put into the agreement that they could break up into five states if they wanted to.
Then Texas would have ten senators.
But believe me, when that was brought up and you talked to people in Texas, no way do you break up Texas.
Texas is Texas.
We may leave the Union, but you're not going to break up Texas.
So secession is good to a degree.
But the use of patriotism is something they use to put a guilt trip on somebody.
You're some type of a scoundrel, the type of thing that they placed on me if I didn't support the wars that I'm an American against the troops.
And yet, of course, the real American position is belief in liberty.
And part of that belief in liberty for us is that you should have the right to leave an organization that becomes abusive of liberties.
Chris, I want to thank you for being with us today.
Thank you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I want to thank our audience for joining us.
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