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This Doesn’t Look Good
Almost a week ago, Catalonia held a referendum to separate from the Spanish state. Madrid declared this referendum illegal and sent police in to try to stop it by interfering with the voting and seizing ballots. There appears to be overwhelming support for independence. Unlike some other separatist movements (e.g., Scotland), this one is going to stick: maybe not right away but soon.
Regardless of the merits of the Catalan case, the optics here are terrible. Take it from an optical physicist.
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Published in Politics
Absolutely true. But the American states were formed without their consent. They were working under the old social contract, which they never wished to tear up.
So if the argument is that governments shouldn’t be able to keep people in a social contract because doing so is a form of tyranny, it seems that minorities should not be able to force people out of a social contract either because that is also a form of tyranny.
After all, Loyalists were ultimately deprived of their property, their liberty, and their country. (They really could not stay in the US.)
So I am questioning the reasoning behind saying that a central government cannot require perpetual union because that is tyranny, yet a minority can sunder a social contract without the consent of many and that is liberty.
There seems to me to be some dissonance there.
We seem not to have as much disagreement regarding the sovereign right of the people to self-govern as we do about whether states of our Union have a right to secede, is secession proscribed by the Constitution, or was the issue settle by the might of the Union forces in 1865.
By the time the Constitution was written and ratified the Loyalists, who were in this land by not of it, were a distinct minority. At the time of the actual fighting both the Patriots and the Loyalists were minorities.
Which social contract are you referencing? Remember these were colonies before the Declaration and the people in the colonies were not governed by the same laws as those living in the homeland under the Crown. How can we even speak of there being a social contract existing in America before the War for Independence? Isn’t that a large measure of what the fighting was about?
Um. Of course there was a social contract between the colonists and the crown before the Revolution. The American-British were like the Brits in London: British subjects, and they saw themselves as British subjects. They were part of the same empire that overthrew two kings via the English Civil War and then the Glorious Revolution.
(Locke was writing about the consent of the governed in the 1680s, and they read John Locke.)
Anyway, the American-British felt they had virtual representation in parliament, though the *patriots* rejected this concept.
In reality, the British living in Britain itself were subjects of rotten boroughs and other such nonsense that meant they, too, were less than represented per any vote.
The Colonial Assemblies grew in part out of convenience per the salutary neglect and the barrier of oceans. Loyalists did not view these as supreme. Patriots did.
When Loyalists (eventually) moved to Canada, it was to maintain the social contract under which they felt they had lived and which Patriots had torn up.
The Constitution was ratified years after a minority of people forced a revolution which tore up what was a social contract between the American-British and the British.
This post is about what’s going on in Spain. A point was made that there should be a majority of Catalans on board with secession before secession ever actually happens.
If making references for comparison purposes to the theoretical rightness of breaking away from a country with a *minority* pushing the issue a la the American Revolution, you can’t jump to the *end* of the Revolutionary Era. You have to look at the *beginning.*
Yes, and they fought in the conflict with the Crown in an effort to preserve the existing social contract so they were very simply a part of the ruling opposition. I don’t see how you would think there is anything wrong with their not having a voice in the new contract, we also excluded all the other Loyalists. There was another significant minority, pacifists and those who had no interest either way. I think most of those chose to support the formation of the Union and they were not driven out.
I agree that comparisons aren’t very useful. For the record though, the colonial Loyalists, although far from a majority themselves, did vote at the ‘beginning’ by furnishing logistical and military support and allegiance to the Crown.
I’m a member of the Daughters of the Revolution. I am fine with the new country that was formed.
What I’m challenging is the assertion that if a state is held in perpetual union, the government is being tyrannical, but when one group of people forces another to secede, that’s not being tyrannical. That is a position at odds with itself. These are *both* a form of tyranny if either is a form of tyranny.
I have also said the question of whether or not the states can secede was decided in a war in the 1860s. (The answer was “no.”) In the same way, the question of whether or not one could remain loyal to Britain if in the US was answered in the 1700s. (The answer was “no.”)
In both cases, the answer was coerced, but the answer was given.
Sure. And the Patriots were not in the majority either. (They just won.)
Ok. I wasn’t into the use of the word tyranny, but even that word’s meaning applied then and now would likely be quite different.
It would appear to me that the only way to justify secession is to win the contest of force.
I have no idea what the political forces at work in Spain are. But certainly the forces at work between Spain and the EU and between Madrid and Catalonia are many. Where is the sovereignty? We have that same question in the US. And there are better ways to handle it than secession. Federalism, anyone. Our founders were so perceptive. I mean the Anti-Federalists who lost.
I agree with this. Of course for people to go to war, they must feel they are in the right. But what is “right” is then a matter of winning. It’s not really about whether or not one is ideologically a conservative.
The difference between geographical territory and ideological territory.
That was John Locke’s take, yes. Hence the phrase “appeal to Heaven” as meaning “rebellion” -and also why we put that on our naval vessels in the War of 1812.
In re: the US compared to Catalan. The Colonies listed their grievances in the form of British law and custom, they pointed out all the ways that the British monarchy was abusing them and depriving them of their rights as British subjects -and in effect declared that since Britain had ejected them from the nascent Empire anyway, they owed no allegiance to the Crown any further. Theirs was a legal argument very much in keeping with the Parliamentary history of England.
Catalan’s grievances -and to a lesser extent Scotland’s -don’t rise to that level. Both countries were brought into the larger unions many hundreds of years ago (Aragon and Castille merged to become Spain in 1462). And while the Spanish Kings’ desire to forge one nation with one language and one religion (oh, and by the by, while it was Isabella’s language they went with, it was Ferdinand’s idea -they used Castellano because they already had dictionaries and lexicons in that language) may have been a bad idea, it has been nearly 600 years. There are lesser methods of redressing those grievances short of revolution.
Catalan is not Ireland. They weren’t conquered. They were part of the unified Kingdom and have always been treated that way.
I definitely know people in Catalan who would argue they still have the right to break away now, and I know too little about that whole situation/culture to truly argue with their passions, but the American history here is great. And what you say about the contrasts of the Revolution to what’s happening in Spain sounds reasonable to me. The contexts were/are much different.
Yes, from what I understand the EU is squarely against secession because the large member nations each have their own potential breakaway regions and no one wants to see a precedent set.
On the other hand, it seems to me that encouraging secession might be in the long-term best interests of the EU, especially for those who want to centralize power and make it a “United States of Europe.” Large nations like the U.K, France, and Germany have their own pull on the international stage and can always threaten to pull a “Brexit” and withdraw from the EU if they don’t get their own way. If Europe were further broken up into 50+ small “states” each the size of Catalonia, wouldn’t they each be more dependent on the EU central government for military protection in a dangerous world?
Completely agree. I’d compare it to the process for amending the U.S. Constitution, which requires both a supermajority vote in Congress plus approval by 3/4 of the states. The bar is very high, as it ought to be. A transient 51% majority vote in one election is insufficient to justify a permanent change in the core social contract — and succession is a more radical, permanent change than any mere Constitutional amendment.
Probably, but we fought a bloody and brutal civil war before accepting the loss of the kind of sovereignty that implies. Many people in the EU value their membership but still see themselves defined more by their country or “state.” Americans rarely identify with state first and country second. That’s a mental distinction with giant difference.
Which I think was a mistake. Neither Brexit nor the Scottish independence vote should ever have been put to a simple majority referendum.
Sometimes Southerners do. When I was in college, I took a course in which the question was asked, Would you die for your state. Only southerners said yes.
This Texan certainly does.
I’ll grant you Texas. Texans are a squirrelly bunch (said with affection).
This is for obvious reasons, but I’ve lived most my life in the South, and that’s not really common… Texas excepted.
My class was 40 years ago.
Makes perfect sense.
It’s an odd question, I’m not so sure what it means. Unless they said they would not die for their country, only for their state, I don’t think it indicates they identify with state ahead of country.
I view California as an inseparable part of the United States, so since I’d be willing to die for my country, of course I’d be willing to die for my state as well, since it’s part of my country. It would be like asking:
That would be inconsistent, since she’s part of your family, unless for some reason you really hate your mother.
For what it’s worth, here’s an opinion from the WSJ about this broo ha ha. The video is around 6 minutes long.
Not sure where you’re getting that. The U.S. Constitution is silent on secession (but if I’m wrong point it out).
So could the Congress, by statute, approve of a state seceding? It’s never been tried, and therefore the courts have not ruled on it. But there’s nothing in the Constitution that explicitly allows it.
The Constitution does talk about states splitting up with the consent of both Congress and the state involved (i.e. Congress can’t force them to). But that means there’s an additional state after the split up. Perhaps two states could legally merge, also with the consent of Congress, but I’m not sure on that,
One way to legalize secession without the consent of Congress would be to call a constitutional convention, which means 2/3’s of states would have to call for it. Three fourths of the states would still have to ratify.
Presumably, such a convention could propose to the states the dissolution of the United States.
Good points. I thought leaving was included in that language that allowed for states joining. But, it does seem to me that if congress can approve a state joining, then it must also be able to approve a state leaving. It also states that a state may be formed by splitting on approval so that indicates that changes to current states only need permission from congress and the state itself.
It also says that “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United states; …” Seems like this should also add into the ability of congress to decide whether a state could leave. There is nothing that says states can’t leave.
Think about it this way as well. If the United States was attacked, could we by treaty surrender a state to another country? If so, could we not also surrender a state to another country formed by the people of that state?