Dangerous Fantasies

I thought the paleos were all for secession! Can you say CSA?

That is a different circumstance, in which you had a number of ultimately sovereign states who (in theory) voluntarily pooled part of their sovereignty into a general entity and then sought to withdraw from the voluntary union. Mr. Fleming no doubt refers to circumstances in which the inhabitants of a region of a unitary state (even if, as in the late Serb&Mtngro, a federally-organized unitary state, as opposed to an actual federal union like the U.S.) seek to secede, basing their claim on supposedly-universal rights.

The notion of Kurdish independence doesn’t shock my conscience. The Kurds were part of two multinational empires (Ottoman Turkey and Iran), and Gertrude Bell and others divided them among four countries (setting aside some who found themselves in the USSR).

When the hideous Wilson was preaching, and the Brits were promising national states to all kinds of nationalities, the Kurds got left out. Perhaps the sermons should have been left unpreached, but the world has nodded to the concept of self-determination. Why should the Kurds be an exception?

If there were a semi-decent multinational empire or a Middle Eastern confederation in the making, I’d be more sympathetic to Fleming’s view. The Kurds certainly have a tradition, ties to the land, and a distinct way of life. As for bloodiness, I doubt Fleming would deny Germans or Russians their nation-states, despite their bloody histories.

Of course, one need not support Kurdish independence at any price, especially if paid in American blood and treasure. That’s a prudential judgment about which reasonable minds can differ. I don’t see why the concept of an independent Kurdistan, however, is so horrifying.

The division of multinational empires into nation-states based upon an abstract principle of “self-determination” has indeed been a bloody mess, but what’s the alternative? The Ottomans has their millets (recognized ethnic/religious communities), and various nationalities survived the rule of the Hapsburgs and the Tsars, although not always happily. Empires, for the moment, however, are passé.

After its violent birth, India has managed to accomodate 14 major languages and innumerable minorities with occasional communal violence, some of it quite serious.

Considering other multinational polities, Switzerland works, Yugoslavia collapsed, Belgium is almost fissioning, and Ceylon suffers through an endless civil war.

Is the rule simply a riff on the old saw of Franklin, “You can have a republic, if you can keep it. Otherwise, fuggedabadit.” Praise the Lord and pass me my AK-47.

This might be taking this post (and blog) too far off topic, but I’m genuinely interested in how Daniel (and presumably Dr. Fleming) defines a “chartered constitution” or chartered constitutional right. And how this charter is different from the principal of self-determination?

Perhaps you just need to point me to an elementary political science text book, but when I googled the term “chartered constitution” one of the first links I got (see here: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/sc01.htm) was a copy of South Carolina’s Constitution! And scrolling through the other links, I didn’t see a quick definition of the term.

And following Grumpy Old Man’s line of thinking, I wonder what can “justify” the existence of any government other than brute force? Is all of “political society” simply Hobbes writ large?

Regarding a constitutional right vs. the principle of self-determination

A constitutional right would be an explicit or implicit right expressed in a constitution, i.e. the agreed supreme law of the land. The principle of self-determination, meanwhile, is merely to say that everyone everywhere and at every time has a universal right to self-determination (just because I said so, essentially). It is the difference between justifying your a secessionist act by pointing out its complete legality under law (constitutional right, if such exists in whichever constitution) and justifying secession based on the supposed existence of a theoretical (and legally unexpressed) universal right of self-determination (the principle).

The Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress was based on supposed universal principle. The withdrawal from the Union by the states which eventually formed the Confederacy was based on a constitutional right.

(Though the Southern secessions were, no doubt, further inspired by supposed universal principle. Would they have seceded even if they did not have the constitutional right, i.e. if the U.S. Constitution had established a permanent and irrevocable union between the States? I think they probably would have, and perhaps this means they were more inspired by a supposed universal right and only happened to have legal constitutional backing as well.)

Thanks to Mr. Cusack for taking a crack at answering my question. Unfortunately, I still don’t understand the ultimate philosophical justification for a “constitutional right” versus the “principal of self-determination”. On the one hand there is a written documents delineating what rights people have or do not have. But who writes the Constitution? And why should anyone choose to follow Constitutional rules unless they a) believed the Constitutional rules were worth following (i.e. they conferred certain benefits to the population) OR b) they are forced to follow the rules (under penalty of imprisonment or physical harm)?

So while Dr. Fleming dismisses “the imagined right of self-determination, a fantasy drawn from the absurd political theories of Locke and Rousseau and given immortality by Jefferson’s utterly fatuous platitudes with which he began the Declaration”; I wonder what political theories he finds more congenial? And why?

Finally, why do Locke and Rousseau get grouped together…I always thought Locke loved private property and Rousseau thought it was oppressive? I guess they both believed in “natural rights”, which I suspect is what drives Dr. Fleming’s ire, but again, without that belief the American colonists might never have revolted and we wouldn’t have an American Constitution or a U.S.A. Or would we?