The right to secede

A friend of mine asked me something a while back, Does anyone and everyone have the right to secede from the country? Can I, if I wanted to, secede and declare myself a separate nation?

I didn't have an answer for him at that time. But I had to sit and have a good old-fashioned think about it. Could I come up with an argument for secession that would sound believable to me, the cynic? It took time to think of and cogitate over.

So lets start off with the basics. What is secession? Wikipedia, in its entry on Secession says:

Secession (derived from the Latin term secessio) is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or political entity. It is not to be confused with succession, the act of following in order or sequence. Typically there is a strong issue difference that drives the withdrawal. Though the term is often associated with full civil war, there are different degrees of secession, some as minor as a particular neighborhood seeking to become a separate municipality from a larger city, while still maintaining greater local or national ties.

So the act of secession, breaking away from a larger whole, is more or explained. But who has the right to do it? And what gives them that right? The best way is to look at who has the right to create the larger whole. Power, being fractal, devolves. Every country was formed by someone. Dravidian fishermen colonised Sri Lanka, then were conquered by a hooligan prince who got chased out of his home in disgrace for being too much of a trouble maker, broke into multiple sovereign countries, were conquered, broke free, re, and re-re-conquered, were unified by Gamini the Evil, who killed an old and respected king for it, broke into pieces again, then taken over by the Portuguese, who were kicked out by the Dutch, who were kicked out by the English, who finally gave independence, which was broken up by Prabhakaran and co. seceding, and now being reconquered. That, as they say is a brief political history of Sri Lanka. And lets not forget that during all this, we also had time for fishermen from the south of Sri Lanka to go and establish a new country in the Maldives.

So what is that all in aid of? Basically to prove a point. Countries are created by right of Acquiris quodcumque rapis, you keep what you can grab (familiar for those of you who watched The Chronicles of Riddick as you keep what you kill). If you can grab it, and keep it from those who would take it from you, then it's yours. All power is derived from that simple system, including the democratic power we value so much. We get voted into power and then do whatever we can to stop our opposition from pushing us out and taking power.

So what gives you the right to secede from the country? Why don't we all do it? We have every moral right to secede from the country. Even if the constitution legally prohibits it. It is interesting to note, that the Constitution is written by those in power, and, unless you are really lucky, it is written to maintain the power of those people. So the Constitution prohibits secession. But do we, as citizens, have the right to secede? I think we do. But, why don't we? The short and simple asnwer.. magic.

The magic that makes us believe that a piece of paper confers ownership. That a deed, a receipt, a registration, means that we own what we have, and that we can get the backing of people with force to either help us keep it, or to get it if we lose it. If we declare secession, we then declare that we no longer require what the initial confederation gave to us. We can refuse to pay taxes, or rates. We can only pay for services received. We can require visas and permission for people to come to our house, and in the same way be able to refuse people access to our house. Or I should say micronation. Some of these rights we already have. Property rights, the right to have a search warrant before the police can enter your house, the right to defend yourself with lethal force from someone who enters your house. They are all there. And yet, without secession, our house can be seized from us for non-payment of taxes or rates, can be taken from us by Eminent Domain, or simply by some politician's thugs deciding to take over.

the problem is that if you do secede, and declare yourself free, the government will come down on you hard. No government wants you to be free from it. It may start a trend. If you can defend your own. if you can make your own, or trade for it, if you can maintain your own stretch of road, or in some way contribut to maintaining your most often used road, if you can look after yourself with minimal impact on and from the rest of the community, you don't need a government picking your pocket. And governments really don't want you to know that. So if you were to declare independence/secession, they would come down on you like a ton of bricks. And every other government in the world would help them. Witness what happened to The republic of Minerva. A bunch of Libertarians created a private island on an unclaimed piece of reef in international waters. When that happened, every country around them hammered them down, with Tonga declaring that they owned the island and sending troops to take over.

So that is what stops us from seceding from Sri Lanka. Not some moral reason to stay part of the country, but that if we were to do so, the government would attack us, and possibly kill us for attempting to break away from their hand on our throat, and their fingers in our pockets.

The right to secede is important. The right to break away, or not support a course of action. The right to say Not in my name, and not with my money. That is the true power of secession. And unfortunately, governments understand that. They don't want you breaking up their voting bloc. They especially don't want you infecting the other sheep with your heretical ideas on independence.

And so, back to secession. Do I believe that we have to right to secede? Yes I do. But we also have the right to take the consequences. If you are willing to do a Braveheart, and run at the cops screaming they can take away our lives but they can't take away our freedom, feel free to exercise that right. But remember, we still do have rights here in Sri Lanka. Even if you can't secede, know wht they are, and exercise them.