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William Lind on Secession
“Calling President Davis”
by William S. Lind
from Defense and the National Interest, June 17, 2009
William Lind
Secession is in the air. In Texas, a Republican governor has dared breathe the word. Vermont has an active and growing secessionist movement. Oregon, Washington and British Columbia already call themselves Cascadia. Last weekend’s Wall Street Journal led off with a piece on secession. The author, Paul Starobin, wrote that:
The present-day American Goliath may turn out to be a freak of a waning age of politics and economics as conducted on a super-sized scale – too large to make any rational sense…
Is this all mere fancy, another amusing idea with which to wile away
the summer? Fourth Generation theory suggests there is more to it than that. The crisis of legitimacy of the state has not passed America by. Washington pretends to offer “democracy,” but both parties are largely one party, the Establishment party. Its game is remaining the Establishment and enjoying the pleasures thereof, not governing the country. The only politics that count are court politics; America outside the beltway exists only as an annoying distraction. As both the economy and the culture crash, the Establishment says, “What is that to us?”
A collapse of the American state is not impossible. But the lines along which most secessionists see it breaking up are overly optimistic. Paul Starobin writes in the Journal,
The most hopeful prospect for the USA, should the decentralization impulse prove irresistible, is for Americans to draw on their natural inventiveness and democratic tradition by patenting a formula for getting the job done in a gradual and cooperative way.
Fat chance.
Instead of a restored Vermont Republic, Cascadia and perhaps a new Confederacy, if America breaks up it is likely to do so along non-geographic lines. Fourth Generation theory suggests that the new primary identities for which people are likely to vote, work and fight will not be geographical. Rather, they will be cultural, religious, racial or ethnic, ideological, etc. Following the sorts of massacres, ethnic cleansings, pogroms and genocides such Fourth Generation civil wars usually involve, new geographically defined states may emerge. But their borders will derive from cultural divides more than geographic ones. Read the rest of the article
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…if America breaks up it is likely to do so along non-geographic lines. Fourth Generation theory suggests that the new primary identities for which people are likely to vote, work and fight will not be geographical. Rather, they will be cultural, religious, racial or ethnic, ideological, etc. … But their borders will derive from cultural divides more than geographic ones.
I think that Lind is fully correct here. However, I would place “racial or ethnic” at the front of that list…if the USA is to splinter it will obviously do so along racial/ethnic lines first and foremost given the primacy of race/ethnicity, especially before vague cultural, sociological, religious, or political reasons.
I’ve been following secession movements for about a year now. The subject seems to be gaining momentum. Something is in the air for sure. Something needs to be done.
For me it is clear we are in a state of fascism. Working class Americans pay the bills for illegal immigrants so corporations can use them as cheap labor. Going to war for profit and using young people as cannon fodder for corporate conquest. Playing the patriotic flute so all can sing and dance along.
When will people wake up?
I think the key question for the various secessionist movements is if they can generate the momentum from being conferences on the subject to actual social movements on the streets advocating such an agenda. So far it remains to be seen if this will happen, but if grassroots opposition to the Federal Reserve system increases, I think the very real possibility of demonstrations in front of state capitals will be a reality sooner than most people think possible. I’m encouraged that these ideas weren’t even in the zeitgeist in 2004. I for one will be on the front lines in support of this!
A pretty good article on the various secessionist movements popping up in the USA these days was recently published in “The Wall Street Journal” of all places; check it out: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204482304574219813708759806.html