Last October I heard Juan Enriquez give a stimulating talk on why national identity was a brand name loyalty to which could never taken for granted. I blogged about his talk here. The July/August issue of Orion has a wonderful article discussing the prospects for secession movements in the US. Exemplified by its three most visible institutions, the Middlebury Institute, Vermont Commons, and Second Vermont Republic, Vermont has become the center for different kinds of secessionist talk in the US today. Author Bill Kaufmann chronicles the rise of modern American secessionism that, intriguingly, is occurring across ideological boundaries.

I am very sympathetic.

The last six years will have deeply alarmed any American with even the slightest understanding of the principles our country was founded on. Conservatism and classical liberalism have proven to be worthless as movements concerned with limiting arbitrary governmental power, as so many of their leading figures became cheerleaders for the Bush regime. A great many Democrats and more progressive liberals such as Hillary Clinton remain enamored with the prospects of American military power projected into other people’s countries. What we are seeing, I think, is a blindness to principle and decency that comes from being drunk on power.

Add to this the almost complete dereliction from duty of our mainstream media. The only business given explicit constitutional protection, the media was safeguarded not to ensure high profits for parasites such as Rupert Murdoch. But rather to serve citizens, that they may be better able to manage their affairs as a self-governing country. But today Paris Hilton gets more attention than Iraq everywhere but the comedy channel and Keith Olbermann.

Such a perception of power also blinds typical citizens. They may feel personally powerless, but at least we can annihilate anyone else. This is a complete corruption of the responsibilities of citizenship. As I described here, patriotism has increasingly been corrupted into something no decent person can endorse, one of the greatest blows possible against our country. It began when Pat Buchanan urged Richard Nixon to deliberately split the country in order to rule. It became a standard Republican tactic afterwards. As they pursued this strategy they gradually undermined what it once meant to be an American. (One excellent recent analysis of these people is Hilzoy’s dissection of Bill Kristol’s recent lies and venom, over at the excellent Obsidian Wings.)
Corporations have been prime pushers for centralizing power in Washington where it is removed from citizen input and nested in the hands of their well paid lobbyists and corrupt political allies. Legislation is often passed by secret amendment, amendments sometimes authored by some these lobbyists themselves. And George Bush claims powers greater than George III during our revolution against Great Britain. To call this a democracy is to increasingly confuse form with function. We still are – but we are no longer a secure one.

Someday George Bush and Dick Cheney will be gone. But the underlying conditions that bred them and their henchmen will not be gone. A congressional district once supposedly close to the people now numbers 670,000, larger than any state at the time of our founding. Forty years ago Washington had 60 well paid lobbyists, today it has 35,000, many opulently paid. Even if we survive, and better yet, imprison, the current cabal of criminals holding high office, the enormous power and wealth required effectively to seek high office will disproportionately attract sociopaths, would-be emperors, and similar sorts, as a quick look at today’s Republican Presidential candidates will attest, for there the political and moral rot has proceeded farthest. But anyone who thinks the Democrats are immune is fooling themselves.

Any clear eyed look at what nations treat their citizens best, by virtually any standard, will demonstrate that far from being first, the US lags well behind a great many other nations. And these nations are often tiny by comparison. The Economist lists Ireland as having the best quality of life. Citymayors.com ranks the most livable cities worldwide, with Zurich, Geneva, and Vancouver the top three, and Honolulu and San Francisco as the top American examples, at numbers 27 and 28, respectively. As Michael Moore’s SICKO brought home to many of us, we pay more for medical care than other industrialized countries, and get less. We rank 37 in the world and pay 13.7% GDP, France comes in first, and they pay 9.8% of GDP, as you can see here. From Canada to Denmark to Finland to Switzerland to France to many more, by any objective standard the US is looking poor and getting worse as a place to live for most.

In other words, the US is too big for its own good.

The strongest argument for large size is military: we need large size to protect us from others. But in an age of terrorism and nuclear weapons large size no longer has the advantage it once did. Too large a size, such as the US possesses, breeds the arrogance that leads to invading others, thereby stirring up hatred against us we otherwise would not have – and vulnerability to terrorist attacks that no aircraft carriers or missiles can stop.

Additionally, and of vital importance, democracies do not fight wars with one another, and there are powerful internal reasons why this is so and likely to remain so. See my piece on the Democratic Peace (scroll down to the article) or find it in The Review of Politics, Spring, 1995. Also see R. J. Rummel’s work here. (Prof. Rummel still supports our Iraqi nightmare, alas, but that’s another issue.) Only weakening American democracy, as Bush, the Christian Right, and Neoconservatives seek, threatens to set back this, perhaps the most exciting achievement of human beings since the first city rose. And undermining it may be the most horrendous result of Bush, the Neocons, and the Christian Right, should their conspiracy against the rest of us succeed.

Rather than lose what remains of democracy in the US, break it up. As Singapore and Luxembourg amply demonstrate, countries can be truly tiny, and do very well indeed. New England, with or without an independent Vermont, would do just fine. California would flourish. The Pacific Northwest could easily manage better than it does today, singly or together. Even the American interior would do just fine while the interior West would have to learn to live within its means. Having learned that, it would be a blessing to the rest of us as well as its own citizens.

So would that other center of national welfare, the South. From my perspective I wish they had succeeded in leaving in1860. I am happy to cut Lincoln some slack. No one knew about the democratic peace at that time or that slavery would die out worldwide by 1881, and die out peacefully, except for Middle Eastern and African backwaters. Lincoln was a genuinely great man, but I think we would be better off if they had left to pursue their own destiny, whatever it might be. I think the rest of us would be better off if they did the same today.

There may be ways to preserve American national unity and turn the tide against despotism and imperialism. Maybe. But it would require an extraordinarily effective movement against corporate corruption, sclerotic representative institutions, and a military grown out of all proportion to its legitimate functions. I am increasingly convinced that the damage is too far gone for this tactic, though I will do all in my power to make it work.

But but may just be time for us to become mutually good neighbors, truly in charge of our own communities. Such a split will not be like what Pat Buchanan seeks, where one group of citizens tyrannizes over another because all are required to submit to rule many find alien. Instead it is a split so that far more Americans can join communities where they truly feel at home, to work out in peace whatever destiny awaits them.