Kosovo’s secession
February 26, 2008 – 11:58 pm by JohnOn the morning of February 18, the day after the region of Kosovo announced its secession and independence from Serbia, someone at work had the radio on NPR, which was mainly broadcasting the BBC’s coverage of the Kosovo secession. Most of the coverage, especially the comments they played from citizens of that area (Kosovars and Serbians, I imagine) and government officials, was pretty positive. But then there was this one non-Kosovar they interviewed who directly addressed the one true, universal human morality, individualist anarchism, without even realizing it. He was very critical of Kosovo’s declaration of independence. I’ll call him Peter for lack of recollection of his actual name, which I couldn’t have spelled even if I did remember it.
The gist of what he said was: How can these people just up and claim their independence from a U.N.-recognized country out of the blue? Then maybe all provinces can simply declare their independence from their national governments with equal ease! And all cities from their counties and provinces! Why can’t I just declare myself my own individual political jurisdiction of Petoria and be independent from any government?
I kid you not, that is an accurate paraphrasing of what he said. Except his name was nothing like Peter; I just added that in because it reminded me of that episode of Family Guy.
The right of individual secession from any government, thereby rendering it a monopolistic government no longer, is universal and absolute. Most people think this can’t possibly be moral because it couldn’t possibly be practical. Instead of allowing people to adhere to their own morality and encouraging a system in which everyone must respect his neighbor’s morality or risk being unprotected by any security firm (and worse), their solution is to force everyone to submit to a system that is odious and unfair to everyone! This makes the system (the State) outside of the rest of society, by definition, so that it must adhere neither to society’s laws nor even to its own rules and bylaws! Disregard all this talk of morality—that’ll work so well, it has to be just!
The reason local or individual secession doesn’t ever happen in real life is because the agents of the State will kill anyone who tries. First you will be warned, and when you ignore such warnings, as is your perfect right, you will be kidnapped and enslaved (imprisoned). When you resist this kidnapping, as is your perfect right, you will be shot and killed. This is the ultimate justification for the State’s monopoly on the use of force: submit or be killed. Very few people exercise their right to keep all of their money, run their business the way they want, or start a company that performs a function the State claims a monopoly on. The reason these don’t happen is not because everyone agrees that the majority rules and the State should be submitted to, right or wrong; it’s because the State must be submitted to, and if not you die.
You want to buy something else with your tax dollars? You have fundamental philosophical objections to what the State does to harmless, non-violent people? With your tax dollars? You think you can run your business and raise your children without the State’s coercive restrictions and mandates? You object to being tried in one of its sham courts with its corrupt lawyers and judges and its preposterous jury-drafting system? Not only did you not vote for your elected officials, you specifically and actively voted against them and everything they stand for? We will pretend to debate you about right and wrong, better and worse, and let you feel like you had a say in the matters of government and politics; but that is all irrelevant in the end because if you put your preferences into action, we will kill you. That is the pertinent issue, and that is why the State wins and you lose. That is why the government is the way it is; not because it is right, or because your voice was heard and accounted for, but because we will kill you if you don’t submit completely.
Maybe when Statists imagine the unfeasibility and downright impossibility of anarcho-capitalism, the reason is that they envision people operating in the world of violent, divisive, antagonizing, depraving, amoral, corrupt, coercive socialist-Statism, and not in an environment of freedom, respect, voluntarism, cooperation, free trade, social responsibility, and the supremacy of morality (right vs. wrong) in place of power (might makes right).
