by Kirkpatrick Sale, DumpDC

Yes, Aristotle declared there to be a limit to the size of states: “a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large…, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled,” so he said. But, really, what the hell did he know? He lived at a time when the entire population of the world was somewhere around 50 million people—about the size of England today—the population of the Greek-speaking city-states, which were not united in a nation, in all may have been 8 million, and Athens, where he lived, considered a large city, would have been under 100,000 people. Limits? He couldn’t even imagine a world (ours) of 6.8 billion, a nation (China) of 1.3 billion, or a city (Tokyo) of 36 million. How is he going to help us?

It is because, firstly, he did know that there are limits: “Experience shows that a very populous city can rarely, if ever, be well governed; since all cities which have a reputation for good government have a limit of population. We may argue on grounds of reason, and the same result will follow: for law is order, and good law is good order; but a very great multitude cannot be orderly.” And it doesn’t matter if that city is 1 million or 36 million–political entities at such sizes could certainly not be democratic in any sense, could not possibly function with anything approaching efficiency, nd could exist only with great inequities of wealth and material comfort.

And because, secondly, he did know that human beings are of a certain limited size of brain and comprehension, and that putting them in the aggregate does not make them any smarter—or as another philosopher, Lemuel Gulliver, once said, “Reason does not extend itself with the bulk of the body.” There is a human scale to human politics, defined by human nature, that functions well only in such aggregations as do not overstress and overburden the… quite capable and ingenious but limited human brain and human capacity.

So political units, Aristotle said—he thought mostly in terms of cities, not knowing nations—but even if we may extend those units with the experience of 2000 more years to larger units such as nations, they have to be limited: limited by human nature and human experience. And it is with that maxim of Aristotle’s that we now may start contemplating what in today’s world would constitute the ideal, or let us say the optimum, size of a state, with these two overriding criteria: “sufficient,” in Aristotle’s words, “ for a good life in the political community”—that would be some form of democracy—and “the largest number which suffices for the purposes of a good life”—that would be efficiency. Democracy and efficiency.

And hark– this is not some sort of idle philosopher’s quest. It is, or could be, the foundation of a serious reordering of our political world, and a reordering such as the process of secession—indeed, only the process of secession, as I see it—could provide. We have abundant evidence that a state as large as 305 million people is ungovernable—some scholar said in the paper just this past Sunday that we are in the fourth decade of the inability of Congress to pass a single measure of social consequence. Bloated and corrupted beyond its ability to address, much less solve, any of the problems as an empire it has created, it is a blatant failure. So let us be bold to ask, what could replace it, and at what size? The answer, as will appear, is the independent states, that is to say nations, of America.

Let us start by looking first at real-world figures of modern-day nations to give us some clue as to population sizes that actually work.

Of all the world’s political entities—there are 223 of them, counting the smallest independent islands—45 are below 250,000 people, 67 below 1 million, 108 below 5 million; in fact 50 per cent of nations are below 5.5 million, and a full 58 per cent are smaller than Switzerland’s population of 7.7 million (Wikipedia: World populations by rank). That says right there that it is obvious that most countries in the world function with quite relatively small populations. And looking at the nations that are recognized models of statecraft, there are eight of them even below 500,000—Luxemburg, Malta, Iceland, Barbados, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and San Marino—and the example of Iceland, with the world’s oldest parliament and an unquestioned beacon of democracy (troubles of its banking aside), suggests that 319,000 people is all you would need. Going up a bit in size, there are another nine models of good governance below 5 million, including Singapore, Norway, Costa Rico, Ireland, New Zealand, Estonia, Luxembourg, and Malta.

Next, let’s look at the size of the most prosperous nations ranked by per capita Gross Domestic Product (Wikipedia: List of countries by GDP, CIA Factbook). (Parenthetically let me say that I realize GDP is a crude and entirely uncritical measure of economic worth, and reflects all kinds of growth, much undesirable, but until we have nations devoted to steady-state economies instead this is the best way to gauge economic performance.) Eighteen of the top 20 by GDP rank (a total of 27 countries because of ties) are small, under 5 million, and all but one of the top ten are under 5 million (that’s the U.S., at ten, the others being Liechtenstein, Qatar, Luxembourg, Bermuda, Norway, Kuwait, Jersey, Singapore, and Brunei in order); the average size of those nine is 1.9 million. The average size of all 27 of the top economic nations, excluding the U.S., is 5.1 million.

You are beginning to get the picture.

Let’s take another measure—freedom, as reckoned by three different rating sites, Freedom House, the Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, using measures of civil liberties, open elections, free media, and the like. Of the 14 states reckoned freest in the world, nine of them (64 per cent) have populations below Switzerland at 7.7 million, 11 below Sweden at 9.3 million, and the only sizeable states are Canada, United Kingdom, and Germany, the largest, at 81 million.

Read the rest at this link.

by Kent McManigal

Any time the subject of “secession” comes up, you get the apocalyptic hand-wringers saying that the “USA” must stay united at all costs.  Isn’t this the justification Lenin Lincoln used to facilitate the murder of multitudes of people?  Yet, the same people who vociferously defend holding the “USA” together in spite of all the reasonable arguments to the contrary are the same ones who oppose “one-world government”.  So, which is it?  They can’t have it both ways.

How much “state” is the perfect amount for the statists, and how do they know that the current size of the “USA” is “it“?  What are the odds that the status quo is the best possible situation?  Maybe it would actually be the “perfect size” by annexing New Zealand (no offense to Kiwis) or by kicking out Florida.  Or perhaps a better situation could be had by splitting the “USA” along the Mississippi River.  America is not “united” except by a common enemy: the US government.

It is unthinkable to these people that America be “allowed” to break up into smaller, more appropriate bits.  Bits based upon demographic regions or simply based on states seceding.  They speak about how “we are stronger together“.  Yet, if that were true, or if they really believed it were true, there is no stronger, bigger “unit” than the entire planet.

Just as I don’t support “nations”, I do not support “one-world government”.  Not even if I were able to emigrate to a new politically-unspoiled world.  That is because I know there is nothing good or ethical or even “safer” about coercive government of any size.

I advocate the ultimate in secession: down to the level of the individual for permanent “social unit size”.  For temporary, voluntary, collectives, any size or combination is acceptable, but only as long as membership or participation is completely voluntary and can be unilaterally abandoned by anyone at any time for any reason (or no reason) with no punishment, as long as their legitimatecommitments were satisfied.  That goes against everything the statists believe.  And it shows their hypocrisy beyond any shadow of doubt.

by Claire

This Tuesday Sept. 8th President Obama is planning to address the nation’s school children DIRECTLY, through a live internet broadcast at 12 noon. If you do not want Obama to have access to your children to say whatever he wants to them during their school hours without you being there, there are a few things you can do:

-Call the school’s principal to find out whether the school was planning to show the speech, and if they are, let the principal know that you feel the role of the school is to educate, not to indoctrinate, and that you do not consent to have your child spoken to directly by any politician or government official, for any reason. Maybe if enough parents call, the school will not show the speech to students.

-If the school is going ahead with plans to show the speech, you can keep your child out of school that day.

-You can write up a consent form that would allow a parent of your choice, in your community, to remove your child (and all other children whose parents consent to it) from the area where the speech is being broadcast, and for that period of time, engage the children in some alternate educational activity, such as reading the text of the Constitution, for example.

Here is the government website, with details of the event:
http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml

and a letter from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to School Principals, encouraging them to broadcast the speech, and to accompany it with other activities promoting the same agenda:
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/bts.html
[Check out the suggested activities that are meant to accompany the speech-- I think the intention is for schools to make this a day-long event in honor of the President]

The ostensible message that students should work hard to educate themselves may seem relatively benign, but the insidious subtext is that you should work hard not for yourself and your own individual happiness, but for the country, society, the state– to make America more competitive in the world, to raise standards of living (through redistribution, presumably) for all Americans, etc… I personally don’t want my children to grow up believing that they exist to serve the state, that it is somehow normal to think this way.

But fundamentally, it doesn’t really matter what it is that Obama is planning to tell American children on Tuesday. What does matter is that it is totally inappropriate for him to be addressing children directly at a time when they are away from their parents, and a captive audience in their classrooms. State indoctrination of children is a hallmark of totalitarian government. Don’t let it happen here.