All polities come to an end sooner or later. The fanciful America-will-last-forever position is something that should seem plausible only to small children or the hopelessly naïve.
Is this trend toward soft secession necessarily illiberal? Is the potential for creating more states or political subdivisions, even if smaller and less sclerotic, moving us further from an idealized Hoppean private community model?
Political decentralization in modern times has shown itself to be the most potent intellectual restraint on the growth of Leviathan. The Constitution is not enough.
Often, when the “smash the state” position is invoked—especially among those less familiar with the state as an institution—further investigation reveals a dangerous lack of precision about what exactly the state is.
The present Trudeau administration has continued straining economic relations with the western provinces. And the government’s tough lockdowns have heightened polarization in Canadian politics,
For the libertarian, the way forward is not joining in left-right political boxing matches, but secession. The success of libertarianism is independence from the state’s influence.
The State of Missouri has adopted a new law mandating that state and local officials no longer assist in enforcing federal gun laws. The strategy has already been proven to work in states refusing to enforce federal marijuana laws.
