[This article is adapted from a talk presented at the Houston Mises Circle, January 24, 2015.]

Presumably everyone in this room, or virtually everyone, is here today because you have some interest in the topic of secession. You may be interested in it as an abstract concept or as a viable possibility for escaping a federal government that Americans now fear and distrust in unprecedented numbers.

As Mises wrote in 1927:

The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.

Im sure this sentiment is shared by many of you. Mises understood that mass democracy was no substitute for liberal society, but rather the enemy of it. Of course he was right: nearly 100 years later, we have been conquered and occupied by the state and its phony veneer of democratic elections. The federal government is now the putative ruler of nearly every aspect of life in America.

Thats why were here today entertaining the audacious idea of secession an idea Mises elevated to a defining principle of classical liberalism.

Its tempting, and entirely human, to close our eyes tight and resist radical change to live in Americas past.

But to borrow a line from the novelist L.P. Hartley, The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. The America we thought we knew is a mirage; a memory, a foreign country.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely why we should take secession seriously, both conceptually as consistent with libertarianism and as a real alternative for the future.

Does anyone really believe that a physically vast, multicultural, social democratic welfare state of 330 million people, with hugely diverse economic, social, and cultural interests, can be commanded from DC indefinitely without intense conflict and economic strife?

Read more:

Secession Begins at Home