With Secession, Thomas Naylor provides the average person trapped in the "black-box" of democracy with a short, easy-to-read book that lays out a new political frontier using persuasive and well-reasoned arguments. Unlike most books published on secession, written mostly by political philosophers attempting to weigh the costs and benefits of secession under the assumption of some hypothetical Rawlsian "democratically just" state, Secession is one of the few books available that offers a truly normative case for breaking up the United States and many other of the world's nation-states, using interdisciplinary arguments based on economics, politics, history, culture, and, most importantly, reason. Secession is a path-breaking contribution to the secession literature, and arguably the first of many books on the topic that are sure to follow in the years to come.

On Dissolving the United States of America
by Michael S. Rozeff

Dissolving the Union can therefore be done in two basic ways, either by an effective set of secessions or by amending the Constitution so as to gut the Union. There are any number of other, less well-defined and more messy ways. In fact, secessions would probably result in a messy process that would, for a time, create uncertainty and indeterminacy as to the final political results.

I endorse dissolving the U.S.A. This does not mean that I endorse the 50 states or whatever political combinations of states result as a final ideal political system. I simply view that outcome, which ends the national (usually called the federal) government as greatly preferable to what we now have. Individual states could profitably break up too, but that is another matter.

The Vermont secession impulse is born out of our understanding that the United States - once a great republic - has become an unsustainable Empire governed by a very few. Beyond massive (and bipartisan) national electoral fraud, 9/11's unanswered questions, a "war on terror" (that will not end, we are told, in our life times), the collapse of the U.S. Constitution, the erosion of civil liberties, and the practicing of "disaster capitalism" on a massive scale by political and economic elites, the U.S. is simply too big to function as a democratic republic in its current state. In other words, as astute observers from across the political spectrum have pointed out, the Empire is essentially ungovernable, unsustainable, and un-reformable. 

The Two Most Important Words
by Manuel Lora

Secession is the separation of a large political unit into smaller political units. At first, it would seem that the libertarian should have nothing to do in terms of supporting a particular political group over another. Indeed, all politics implies the existence of a state, and the state is the institution of aggression. Why then should we favor secession?

For one, secession puts local interests above those of faraway politicians. It is impossible to fathom that a few hundred legislators can really know what is the best for your life and the life of your family and friends and community. The politician not only pretends to know what is best for you, but also believes that it is his duty to provide such things. As if that were not enough, the politician will ultimately employ threats against your life and property to force you to comply with the governmental decrees. The above is still true with the more local government, yet secession helps to return the power, even if such power is for now another - but smaller - state, closer to home, where it can become increasingly more manageable.

What about the Ossetians?
by Sheldon Richman

Enough big-power politics, client states, and cynical Orwellian lies! Innocent people have suffered too much to let this go on another moment. Bush presumes Americans will take him at his word, not bother to do any fact-checking, and support his provocative agenda in the South Caucasus. If they do, more injustice will be committed in America's name.

The moral alternative to Putin is not Bush or Saakashvili, but rather condemnation of all the governments involved. Freedom should always take precedence over "territorial integrity." Secession is the indispensable check on government power.

Break Up the Big Conglomerate
by Michael S. Rozeff

The U.S. federal government is a massive conglomerate domestically and internationally. Empire-building, domestic and international, is its entire thrust as it absorbs more and more functions and operations of society's traditionally independent institutions like family, church, and business, as well as those of state and local levels of government. There is no way for such a leviathan to avoid severe incentive and managerial efficiency problems, exacerbated by its enormous taxing and political powers.

The U.S. government has huge expansions into such diverse businesses as old-age pensions, world-wide military security, old-age medical care, medical care for the poor, income assistance, space, science, transportation, and education. This conglomerate has liabilities far in excess of its assets. It is technically bankrupt. Unless it deconglomerates, it can stay afloat only by absorbing the wealth of its citizens or reneging on its promises.

I Think I Saw Tom Paine
by Carolyn Baker

Although I support the efforts of the Vermont Independence movement, I am well aware that dramatic earth changes and the collapse of a rotting U.S. infrastructure in a plethora of locations may well result in numerous, small, unintended, unimagined sovereignties throughout the North American continent. How will those communities live? How will they share, cooperate, function in harmony with each other and the earth community-or will they?

Thomas Paine's Common Sense was one of the most powerful instruments in forging the struggle for independence. The writings of one man, a "nobody" by today's standards and those of his day, transformed the thinking of the New World and motivated thousands to look deeply within themselves to assess what really mattered to them.