The Bioregional State as "Constitution, Version Two:" Arguments For and Against Secession, and the Bioregional State's Middle Path (3 of 4)

The Bioregional State's Middle Path: Re-Federated Bioregionalism


We get to the third point: is secession, nullification, and re-federation desirable?

Below I provide arguments for secession, against secession, as well as arguments for the bioregional state's middle path: re-federated bioregionalism.

A federated bioregionalism as a political ideal means keeping two sides of the same coin. First, it  means getting clear how to make your bioregion stronger institutionally, economically, and culturally. It means learning--by hard practice getting to know who actually lives as your neighbors--human and ecological--how to build cultural consensus and bioregional sustainability mechanisms of your own to do that (suggested: like using the CDI and the CEI) before you launch any secession or refederation ideas, if that is what is desired later.

In other words, build up your institutional strength first for an Ecological Reformation in all areas: in getting to know your neighbors (cultural institutions like the CDI), in educational choices more attuned to regional issues, consumer choices more attuned to regional markets and ecological integration, sourcing, and pollution flows by savvy better choices completely removed or re-utilized so they never actually pollute; and any choices of complementary currencies of finance [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] (what really would make these work would to have them co-accepted for local taxes and other public services). All these will encourage more regionalized flows of relations between those in your bioregion and no one has to be granted permission to do these.

If you are successful in the above, then, second, I expect later a political program like the bioregional state and a widened Ecological Bill of Rights is more possible instead of expecting that to come first.  Why do I say this? There are two sets of data. First, from the experiences of Bolivia and New Zealand, we have data that only such wider state venue changes are available for change if or once such a wide array of ecological checks and balances already have been instituted or still are traditionally in place. Inversely, second, we have data from other places have failed when they attempt the state change first without any other Ecological Reformation first (for instance in Brazil or Colombia or in Ecuador; or in some African countries like Rwanda) because the corruption and degradative clientelism in all the other areas of daily life are so great and so degradatively well connected as to be able to destroy any movements toward greater civil rights and sustainability.

So the point is: learn how to make your regions stronger first instead of just making your 'state opposition' stronger on the pretext of your secession. I expect mere opposition (however justified) without positive construction will merely reap the whirlwind and give you even more of the tyranny than you bargained for afterwards.

Second, after achieving something like an Ecological Reformation in your bioregion, then you can reach out with other bioregions in committees of bioregional correspondence. This will be the open question what different bioregions later decide and is unable to be predesigned: remain under ecological tyranny of the states within which they are with some form of nullification of some policies while keeping others; move toward a form of more complete regional autonomy and/or secession; or move toward a form of mutual refederation with other like minded bioregions.

It will be up the bioregional publics in question to what degree that mere nullification, secession, or refederation will be useful or desired.

Any of these paths could include mutual aid that is useful or beneficial to each other. However for a bioregional refederation, benefits would be toward conflict resolution over border issues including cross border pollution flows; wider infrastructural projects if desired, or funds or labor for emergency responses to any region, even mutual defense, etc.

Before I get to those three kinds of arguments, first some current events from the United States that show such arguments are more than abstract. We have to get clear among ourselves what are the ramifications of secession as it is getting so pronounced within political speech in culture and politics:


The Three Current Rages: Secession Versus Federal Supremacism, Versus a Middle Path of Nullification

There are three current political rages in the United States at present. All countries have these issues to a point. Two of these are the current rages for secession and for federal/national supremacy. I analyze the content of the first rage first, then I discuss various arguments for it, pro or con. 

This first growing rage has various levels: toward secession or mere nullification. Both are faiths in a greater regionalist enhancement of the future in certain areas of life that may or may not be secessionist in culture and politics in other areas of life. It seems a rather uneven movement. Fro example, some in this regional movement are full secessionists (like Kirkpatric Sale for instance or the Second Vermont Republic movement). Others animating their desire for only nullification of particular policies (i.e., as a limited case-based 'secession on some policies' while keeping other federal support thus still believing in in the value of a more federated arrangement in other areas.)

This first growing rage matches the second growing rage of greater support for federal supreamcy that is (or rather, was--until early 2013 when it reversed and more people began to fear it) taking the population by storm between 2001-2012. This was the mostly ambivalent and/or complete active support for an unlimited centralized police state. During this period the United States began to openly practice what it had done in the dark for longer: selective martial law during declared 'federal emergencies', kidnapping, torture, unauthorized wiretapping, and the murder of anyone the President chose when it suited him--every Tuesday in fact, it was reported. It was a page of history: Obama exhibited the same expected bureaucratic, rationalized, totalitarian banality that Hannah Arendt wrote about that characterized all dictatorships of the 20th century.

Such a federal supremacism has many 'followers' or at least hangers-on, and they are equally divided for many different rationales: some for group adulation that want to see the end of all states rights, some because they mistrust their own fellow people in their own states (so they think that other people farther away are more trustworthy or different), some because they are ambivalent and satisfied with playing with NSA-hackable smartphone technology, and others because they are supporting what is happening simply out of quiescent motionless fear. they are the deer in the headlights fearing to do anything to improve their situation because they mistrust other places they might go just as much as the future situation that they see barreling down on them.

Under this federal supremacy doctrine, there really is no need for any checks and balances or limitations on state power. The U.S. Bill of Rights is "totally inoperative" by common bipartisan agreement under the current Obama Administration--though hardly supported by the population at large. Even ex-President Jimmy Carter has recently opined in public that "America no longer has a functioning democracy." However, such a trend didn't begin under Obama. It began in earnest under the previous Bush Administration. Instead of being 'change,' Obama has accelerated a police state. Obama might as well be called "Bush III". Obama is a dream come true for the totalitarian militarists: the people that opposed Bush with his white skin from the right are the same people that support Obama with his black skin from the left--even though the pro-war and anti-civil rights polices are the same or even worse under Obama than they were under Bush ironically.  

This second rage of federal supremacism is simply built on the premise of 'trust us while we make everything even more secret and while we spy on your every move.' There is a false sense of security that "totalitarianism or full blown fascism can't happen in the United States"...despite history showing that fascism from the right or totalitarianism from the left couldn't have happened worldwide without U.S. federal support or a coterie of U.S. financial support throughout the 20th century, and despite it starting to happen 'stateside' in the U.S. for over 11 years.

More people are leaving their support of this trend though. Recent polls indicate that 70% of the United States felt that their Constitutional Framers would be "ashamed" of the current republic. And now 50% feel greater mistrust of the federal government than trust of it.

Poll: Majority of Americans dislike feds handling of 13 of 19 issues, in majorities of 56% to 85%. Top dislike, bad financial management 

Poll: Majority of 71% Say Founding Fathers Would Be Ashamed of USA Now: majority "aware of downfall" and disappointment has been rising from 2001.

However, the regionalist rage is part of the U.S. cultural tradition, its revolutionary tradition, the Constitution's federated contract itself. The latter rage of complete federal supremacy is not part of the U.S. tradition at all.


The Regionalist Rage: Secession 2012


For the first group, secession is the rage for some. Around 700,000 people within only a week of the recent re-(s)election of Obama for U.S. President that saw much vote fraud for Democrats and Republicans equally are fed up with massive corruption. Corruption is listed as a major concern of two-thirds of Americans for the past year (2012, and 2013), at around 64-66%--comparable to economic concern.
  
Another way to vote for regionalism and fear of federalism of course is to look at purchasing behavior. Soon after Obama's re-(s)election, FBI reports that gun purchases broke historic records for monthly averages immediately after the November 2012 election. Is this a federal government that people trust? No, it is not.


Vote fraud, corruption and environmental pollution (illegal GMOs planting being allowed by special act of Congress [The "Monsanto Protection Act"], nitrates in watersheds, pesticides that kill bees allowed to continue) are all being left unaddressed.

The bioregional state argues that these three issues of vote fraud, corruption, and environmental pollution are one in the same. It is the same issue under different names.

In a phrase that captures the breadth of upset, the concern is a growing 'combined human tyranny and ecological tyranny merging'--and it is politically forcing a corrupt unrepresentative consolidation of the economy and destruction of civil rights. At the same moment, it is catalyzing those (with will to move and think) into opposing it. A great regional upset with the corrupt, politically crony, federal edifice is coming out of the woodwork.

Perhaps thanks to the Internet lowering the cost of allowing actual citizens to chat with each other about such issues, for the first time in U.S. history by the end of 2012, all 50 states had petitions for secession. These were lodged unofficially at the Obama White House--within a week of his claim of winning. However, all votes were not even counted yet when Obama declared himself winner. It was just an election by media announcement I guess, occurring within two hours in a country of over 315 million. So just a week after 2012 vote fraud from both sides, fully 50 states have developed petitions to secede from the United States.

By November 14, 2012, seven states had already reached 25,000 signatures: Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Other Western and Rustbelt northern states were not far behind. Remember 700,000 Americans signed in just a week. Once a petition reaches 25,000, this means that the Obama White House promises a formal response in this public relations gesturing website. Nearly a year later, as of September 2013, no response was ever given.

I did an analysis of what issues are popular enough to foment this rage. The most popular issue that people rally around is secession, or at least rallying around their willingness of people to sign a petition about secession instead of actual secession. It shows they are willing to put their name on something toward that ideal though. These are direct quotes from the White House petition page:


I. SECESSION BY A LANDSLIDE

Peacefully grant the State of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

110,973  Signatures

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Peacefully grant the State of Louisiana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

35,640  Signatures

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Peacefully grant the State of Florida to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

33,003  Signatures

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Peacefully grant the State of Georgia to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

30,655  Signatures

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Peacefully grant the State of Tennessee to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

29,676  Signatures

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Peacefully grant the State of Alabama to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

29,068  Signatures

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Peacefully grant the State of North Carolina to withdraw from the United States and create its own NEW government

28,977  Signatures

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And with 50 petitions total more were nearing 25,000 all over the country--in just a week.

This only took a week, folks.

The last time secession was popularly discussed in the U.S. was just some tiny regional affair called the Civil War (1861-1865). Even then, under half of the then states seceded. Some of these failed to secede willingly: they joined later only as Northern states were about to invade through them anyway. This was how Tennessee joined the Southern side of the Civil War very belatedly--only before it was invaded anyway by an approaching Federal Army.

However, now as of 2012, it was all 50 states in which secession is being debated. In United States history, never has secession been this popularly or evenly debated in all regions, in all states, against a federal government simultaneously. That is the point here whether we like it or not. Good things could happen. Equally bad things could happen as well. The future is unwritten.


These are unofficial secession petitions mind you, without any legal basis that would have to derive from their own state legislatures. However, as a popular call, it is astounding what happened in one week. It was as much against those state legislatures' intransigence to act for regional interests as much as against the federal ones.

What has happened in half a year or more after that?

1. From the vantage point of July to September 2013, some of these state legislatures did take the secession message to heart in a moderated way that maintains the federalist arrangement yet exercises the state's right to nullify federal legislation (Amendment #10). Many state legislatures are now forefronts of leadership in various state nullification drives--for example, to remove the NDAA, any Obama-desired gun control legislation, or any federal cooperation with unconstitutional law enforcement, or for making decriminalizing marijuana and/or medical marijuana and ending the federal 'war on drugs' by non-cooperation. After a half year of fighting it, the Obama Administration reversed and gave up. They said they would stop fighting and arresting people federally in those states that had legalized marijuana. The Nullification campaign has succeeded: the ending of the federal drug war and its various police state arrangements has been slowed by several states saying 'no to the war mindset on drugs.'

2. Additionally, from the vantage point of almost a year later, some of these states sheriff's associations and county sheriffs in general have taken this secessionist message to heart as well. They are more than likely now to act upon nullifying their cooperation with federal officers in their jurisdictions. Many have made public statements to this effect--and several state-wide organizations have done so. This as well is within constitutional federal bounds.

Thus I would characterize the mobilization as not really one of 'state secession,' though a more widespread distrust and disgust involved with a more regional (and perhaps growing bioregional?) population at heart. From various bioregions, they are mobilizing against both their own states' legislatures cooperation and their own states' police cooperation with the federal government. The inspirational ideal of Cascadia for instance has started to show record popularity in the past year across the Internet, and bleeding into the physical world as well with planned meetups regarding bioregionalism in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, as well as many Cascadian sports teams, Cascadian consumer products, etc. All of these tiny events like the misting rain of that region flow together and grow in force as they grow together in their watersheds and flow to the sea.

However, remember the U.S. Constitution can be altered by 3/4 of such non-legislative state constitutional conventions--legally thus ignoring both state legislature or federal approval at all. Look it up. Refederation is built into the U.S. Constitution (More on that at the post on "Article 5".)


After secession, what are the other issues involved by sampling the petitions that caused such rage? 

These other petitions are against their own state governments as well since many states, by initiative process, attempted to decriminalize marijuana possession and decriminalize medical marijuana. Two have been successful so far nearly a year later. By order of concern measured by votes on petitions:



II. FEDERAL JURISDICTION GRAB IN A 'DRUG WAR'--AND ITS INNATE MILITARIZATION--REJECTED ENTIRELY

Remove marijuana from the federal Controlled Substance Act and allow the states to decide how they want to regulate it.

57,020  Signatures

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Support a law protecting states' rights to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana like alcohol.

32,246  Signatures

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Federally Legalize Marijuana

23,937  Signatures

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What has happened in a year of this?

Several states have nullified the federal drug war on marijuana, particularly medical marijuana, like the states of Oregon and Colorado. Others are still mobilizing to do the same. What is the next largest rage?


III. GMO LABELING AND WIDER FOOD CHOICE STANDARDS

Support mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods (GMOs).

45,478  Signatures

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Require all Genetically Modified Foods to be labeled as such.

25,300  Signatures

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Finalize Standards for GLUTEN-FREE Labeling

31,265  Signatures

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Fourth, the concern over well documented vote fraud is the next concern. A lot of people mistrust the states or federal government. They doubt that the current corrupt edifice could oversee a clean election:


IV. RECOUNT

Recount the election!

59,929  Signatures

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Why recount? The U.S. has lacked a clean federal election in years--perhaps generations, if you read these books listed here.

2012 US Voting Machines Altering Votes, Live

2012 Voting Machines Altering Votes in Pennsylvania (poll worker informed, does nothing, goes away; film then made)

Meanwhile, corporate media acted like a good Stepford wife as it always does: smiling and pretending it fails to see what dark trends have been going on for years in the United States.

One of the rationales why the media in the US looks away is that the corporate media is part of the problem and is openly involved with state-wide vote rigging itself. The following is from a public access channel in 1996. The author James Collier, interviewed below, recounts how he attempted to get the investigative journalism TV program "60 Minutes" to discuss the following information of US corporate media and certain state governments cooperating to call elections in reporting and then making up the information afterward of hiding votes to the contrary. The "60 Minutes" producers actually were keen on doing it--until it was censored by their management. So the "Collier story" can only be seen here: 

James Collier -Vote Scam-The Stealing of America

An interview from Feb 2, 1996. The Collier brothers found systemic state-wide vote fraud in 1970. They were ignored and banned from the corporate airwaves. Since then, corporate-owned (5 mega-combines) mass-media continues to rigorously and routinely omit reporting on abundant and increasing evidence on systematic, organized defrauding of American elections. Its a HUGE Red Flag of endemic fraud  and corruption all on its own. Corporate, MIC, special interest, global-Mafia manipulation of the Vote underpins the subversion of America's Constitutional Republic enabling the complete takeover of government and its institutions by a criminal syndicate.

Alas, nothing novel here: New York Representative Peter King, partying with Bush on the White House lawn of all places before the 2004 election, smugly claimed in an untouchable fashion on camera no less: "Election's already over. We won. We'll take care of the counting." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dV67u370Pg Next to him, Bush looks ashen after he says this. They went on drinking from their plastic cups on camera. Bush went on to 'win' the election.

More people understand Peter King is right. They take care of the counting. They announce the totals they want in the media. They adjust the totals later to fit what they announced. Or not--sometimes they just stop the counting when it is clearly going against them like in the GMO labeling bill in California that had its count stopped. And then criminally adjusted later.

Moving on through this updated lists of complaints, other issues by rank are:

IV. LESS FINANCIAL GATEKEEPING ON THE INTERNET FOR INFO TAXPAYERS ALREADY PAID FOR: 'WE ALREADY PAID ONCE'

Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.

40,670  Signatures

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V. REPEAL FORCED PURCHASES

Repeal Obamacare. It is killing jobs in this country. Thousands have already lost their jobs because of it.

38,162  Signatures

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Only in the United States could an insurance industry subsidy, a curtailment, and a legal denial (not extension) of medical care for consumers be pawned off in the corporate media as a 'national healthcare policy.' To the contrary, it fails to cover everyone. It is not a 'national' policy. It covers only full time workers--an already dwindling factor in the U.S. economy. Plus, it has encouraged even more businesses to further demote their full time workers in response. Since 2008, the part-timing of U.S. work is rapidly advancing.These people will not be in any 'national' (sic) policy of health care at all.

Third, many American doctors are so fed up with this system promoted by 2014 that many say they may retire en masse, leading to a shortage of doctors. Citizens are already being denied required health care. It's just what happened to The Third Reich once it invaded Austria--and the Reich's repressive versions of healthcare collapsed the Austrian public health care system as well. 

And while he's at it, other points were involved in this outpouring of rage:


VI. THEN IMPEACH YOURSELF

We request that Obama be impeached for the following reasons.

27,434  Signatures

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Conclusion of the Popular Mood

Those six points capture the collective priorities. The rest of the 180 or so petitions seem like a novel venue for embarrassing partisan lobbies ("we want to repress religious speech," "we want to smoke Havana cigars", "we want the Roman Emperor Obama to smite someone or another, etc." However, the six outrages above were different. They were collective. They approached the petition in terms of a common citizenship principle or claim upon all, instead of asking for some imperial favor or loophole. And many of them were quite regionalist in character.

However, the Other Rage: Unchecked Federal Supremacy

Equally, on the other side, there is another rage. In the U.S., federalists are enraged that people want to reject a growing totalitarian state. Such federal supremacists are shouting about treason and organizing to revoking people's citizenship for moving on the ideas of secession. This is the tyrannic behavior that secession minded people point to and nod about as Exhibit B: another example of how far gone is the USA and the Bill of Rights and due process.

Many still supporting the federal government have ceased mostly to be interested in winning people to their side by a change in policy and instead only dream of repressing secessionists to their will. Frankly, this just provides fuel to the secessionist fire which helps no one.

I guess some federal government's supporters do consider the U.S. as a self-made idol, a tin god on earth to worship, something made by human hands that somehow is never in need of polishing, is never tarnished, and somehow never deserves melting down to start over when the metal itself is corrupted by rust.


However, there are equally those that idolize secession or at least see it as a required relighting of the home fires and turning off the TV, or even a required shotgun wedding--without any thought of the 'day after' that wedding except assumptions that to formalize something that is a clear, clean break that is hoped to redeem people, reinspire them, and make their situations better. It could easily make them more miserable though.

So far, from what I see, both the federalist faction and the secession faction are reactive with little long term plan of what to do to reform the federal level if it deserves love, and the others supporting secession having little plan of what to do 'within' that secession creatively--much less what to do about realistic relationships between different secessions.

So I suggest the 're-federation' bioregional state solutions below are more pro-active solutions.

In conclusion, whether this secession expression is merely a symbolic revolt or the start of a real one, who can say? However, secession has never been discussed more thoroughly or geographically in all states in U.S. history than now. Moreover, federal tyranny has never been more pronounced either.

However, I'm interested in solutions as well instead of just storm and fury being documented.


Is secession the answer? Let's debate it pro and con.

I see three kinds of arguments to make about secession: arguments against secession, arguments for secession, and arguments that secession may be a right though is not-optimal or not sufficient. The bioregional state argues the third. Let's review the other two arguments before getting to this third argument toward the ideal of a bioregional federation, or a muti-bioregional state.


1 of 3. Three Arguments Against Secession: Dismissed or the Product of Doublethink


For those that are against secession, first, some people say that that the civil war decided the "old secession issue" with force: that there is no right to secession. This is the 'might makes right' argument. However, as noted by this old guy, if you really believe that then you ignore that the U.S. itself was founded by a vote on secession, and the U.S. even afterward was built from states and people that believed secession was their state right clearly into the mid 1800s since no one was surprised when it was debated. No one thought they gave up their rights to secession when they joined the United States. Moreover, 'might makes right' was an argument for secession in the war for independence, instead of an argument against it.

Second, still some people will claim that all secession is illegitimate regardless. This puts them strangely by definition as a supporter of the position that all forms of tyranny should be tolerated, and that all tyrannies should be eternal. This puts American anti-secessionists completely in the uncomfortable position of being against their own country's foundation, existence, and independence. The foundation as the United States was not just a violent colonial rebellion of 'might makes right'--the first anti-colonial rebellion in European history. Instead of merely 'might makes right,' the war and the state's foundation was equally conducted as a legal, voted, democratic secession against what some felt was an increasingly unrepresentative tyranny from the wider state in which they resided: the British Empire. However, remember: secession of course as a policy hardly made everyone happy. Fully one third of the population of the U.S. colonies left after secession was announced, even with democratic procedures in which secession was conducted--which however limited in its era was radically democratic in its day. Another third of the population seemed rather ambivalent of the whole secession project though they stayed anyway. Only around one-third really were adamant about secession. Unfortunately, most of the U.S. founders as secession leaders were quite content to create their own regional tyranny over their seceded areas until a U.S. Bill of Rights movement they disliked stopped them from doing so. Remember that well if you are so pro-secession: that abstract secession by itself is hardly a panacea. It could create its own tyranny without a well thought out way to check and balance the forces you unleash in secession itself. It is the quality of the culture, the materials, and the institutions you develop before and after secession to avoid tyranny in yourselves that matters. I am one who argues that the U.S. is a constitutional failure. It has failed in its experiment to develop checks and balances against both human tyranny and (now) ecological tyranny which are intertwined.

Third, for some, despite these first two arguments against secession being dismissed, all they have left is recourse to Orwellian doublethink to defend their anti-secession position by internally inconsistent beliefs. This for some is far more comfortable to say: "secession is always bad, except when the U.S. was founded on secession of course, and then it is good, just as it was good when the USSR broke up as well via secession, though now its bad even if the U.S. is tyrannical, it's still bad to consider secession." This doublethink is preferred by those who ignore the truth that secession has always been, for better and for worse, an act repeatedly done throughout world history for both good aims as well as bad aims, and that good or bad only depends on one's point of view what secession is for and what it plans to create.


2 of 3. Pro-Secession Arguments

First, remember no states are eternal so far either. States are not gods to worship. States are human artifices of aggregate interaction. They are inventive constructions to serve human interests in different ways based on their design principles, whether representative or unrepresentative. States can be constructed to destroy human interests just as they can be encouraged to promote them by people who redesign them. States can be redesigned as well.

Second, the U.S. Framers, the world's most famous and successful secessionists, were big state redesigners. Plus, they certainly believed in secession as the bedrock principle of their state redesign--as they wrote its open potential back into Article V and they wrote in the 'mild secession' of Article X in legal non-cooperation of federal policies that overreach the Constitutional bounds that are clearly listed.

Third, they certainly believed that a tyrannous conspiracy to remove their legal rights of secure persons, property, representation, etc., was justification enough for secession before the tyranny was complete.

Fourth, remember the most arch secessionist in U.S. history, Thomas Jefferson, wrote a paean to secession into the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's text was additionally this wild conspiracy theory of the grand evil design of a huge number of abuses, and this text of conspiracy theory is one of the founding documents that all Framers signed and agreed to in fact. So secession and conspiracy theory are American patriotic traditions: both involve thinking ahead, being pro-active, having a plan for yourself, and being aware of trends of others that leave you at a disadvantage or try to box you in. Why should anyone stomach tyranny then? The U.S. Declaration of Independence was a Declaration of Secession and a belief in a vast conspiracy theory: a justification for secession by the slowly growing conspiracy of tyranny. However, this recognized right of secession was conditional only when a larger power kept conspiring to remove their representation and to put them under a tyranny. So they felt they had the conditional secession right "to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another, and to assume...the separate and equal station" they wanted versus their tormentor, so that they could see them eye to eye instead of boot to face.  

Jefferson and the whole U.S. Congress unanimously agreed that this conditional secession is a foundational right and principle of self-determination, since the Declaration of Independence is a declaration of secession mixed with the recounted conditional details of what they claimed was the grand conspiratorial design aiming to put them under such a tyranny:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."

Well, fifth, for another argument, we do have that particular conditional requirement for secession now once more coming from the federal level.

Sixth, and once more we once more have a unanimous debate about secession as all 50 states are weighing in on the issue. In 2012, 'check' for the conditions of slow tyranny and 'check' for an obviously unanimous popular recognition that secession under these conditions may be a way out. So both apply now in 2012 as they did in 1776.

Seventh, the U.S. government still supports secession--recently as in the secession from the Soviet Union of the Central Asian Republics in the 1990s quickly recognized by the United States. There was little argument that "no sorry, secession is a bad principle." Secession was embraced as a form of greater freedom--even if it quickly put these under more secure regional tyrannies and external manipulation of their smaller economies. The U.S. has supported other secessions overseas like the breakup of Yugoslavia for example or the still encouraged breakup of Iraq into three states.


3 of 3. Arguments that are Pro-Secession though Concerned that Secession is a Right Yet Not-Optimal and Not Enough

This is the bioregional state's position. Secession may be a right, though secession by itself is sub-optimal.

First, let's look at some historical examples of recent conditional secession. Remember the ongoing external manipulations upon those smaller novel Central Asian Republics. If you are so pro-secession, remember the conditions of what happens after secession is what really matters. Remember the ongoing external manipulation of African republics as well where the same trading relationships locked them into the same mother country imperial manipulation. It would have been best in other words, to develop more autonomous economic instituitons within African regions first or at least during secession instead of expecting some magic of secession to wipe away any material, educational, financial, or trading relationships that pre-existed secession for independence.

Second, granted, secession is a touchy subject. It typically divides more people than unites them. It divided the early United States into there parts as mentioned above, instead of clearly served to combine them. Secession has been typically the touchstone for more tyranny in a region combined with the wider state that is labeled a tyranny still fighting to regain the territory, as both regional and larger warring parties descend into internal fratricidal civil war and greater tyranny over their regional brethren. In other words, secession historically has not immediately or automatically waved a magic wand and led to the demotion of tyranny regionally or on the larger level in a clean break with the past.

Third, secession is hardly enough. It's an empty slogan. It romanticizes that secession automatically makes things better. Tell that to the African republics or the Central Asian ones after leaving an empire that they still trade with and still keep them at a disadvantage and sends people to undermine their leadership in corruption. Is that what will happen to you?

Since Secession is not optimal, instead work toward a federated and cooperating secession. Since humans are humans, tyranny may exist on the regional level within your post-secession context as well so work on a federated bioregionalism and an Ecological Reformation first.

Fourth, because I argue for a federated bioregionalism and an Ecological Reformation first, get clear how to make your region stronger institutionally, economically, financially, materially, and culturally first. Learn how to build consensus to do that before you launch and debate any secession ideas among yourselves. Learn how to make your regions stronger first, instead of just making your state opposition stronger on the pretext of your secession which is 'their' separatism.

In the next and last section of this series, I elaborate this middle position between secession and federation. I argue why a refederated bioregionalism toward a bioregional state is better than secession though it obviously includes the right of secession.