 I think that you are going to enjoy our program this morning. We decided to have slightly shorter talks, 20-minute talks this morning to allow for two separate Q&A sessions because we'd really like to hear what you have to say. We're going to have some young people coming around with microphones so that you can participate and so be thinking about your questions. We have some speakers today who are well-equipped to handle whatever they might be. And I would especially say that our two speakers, Brian McClanahan and Tom Woods, are both unusually capable of answering any questions you might have or disabusing you of any illusions you might have about secession, that it's somehow un-American, that it's somehow illegal or unconstitutional, or it wasn't contemplated by the founders, or worse yet that it somehow has been settled by the Supreme Court. So with that in mind, I would ask you to consider an argument this morning that I've been making to myself lately, which is basically that I think we should stop viewing or thinking about secession as some sort of mass national political movement that almost takes place mechanically or physically and that it involves a national vote and a redefining of geopolitical borders and the creation of a new legislature and all these things that we tend to think of when we think of a secession movement. Maybe most recently we think of the referendum that took place in Scotland just late last year. What I would say instead is we should think of secession as something that really begins at home, that it begins more on the individual and local level and that it's far less daunting if we view it that way and if we think we have to convince the majority of the country to come our way. And in fact, I would submit to you that when considered in that light, secession actually becomes a tactically more advantageous approach to creating a more libertarian society than perhaps trying to organize some sort of national political candidate. So that said, when I look out here, I think presumably most of you are probably in this room today because you have some interest in this topic of secession or you're very concerned about what's going on in America. You might be interested in secession as an abstract concept or maybe you're very serious and you view it as some sort of viable possibility for escaping a federal government that increasing numbers of Americans now view with fear and distrust. I think you can relate to this as Mises wrote in 1927, prescient, 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 that if one must endure it as a consequence of a military conquest. So I'm sure this sentiment is something many of us share today. Mises understood that mass democracy was no substitution for a liberal society. In fact, it was the enemy of it. Of course, he was right. Now, a hundred years later, almost since he wrote that we've been conquered. We've been occupied by the state and its phony veneer of democratic elections. The federal government is not a putative ruler of nearly every aspect of life in America. And that's why we're here today, entertaining this audacious notion of secession, an idea that Mises elevated to a defining principle of classical liberalism. Of course, it's tempting. It's entirely human to close our eyes and resist radical change. We'd all like to sort of live in America's past. But I'm sure you've heard this before. I'll borrow a line from the novelist L.P. Hartley. He said the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. In America, we thought we knew, ladies and gentlemen, as a mirage. It's a memory. It's a foreign country. And that is precisely why we should take secession seriously, both conceptually as consistent with libertarianism and as a real tactical alternative for the future. Now, does anyone in this room really believe that a vast multicultural, socially social democratic welfare state of 320 million people across more than 3,000 miles with hugely diverse economic, social and cultural interests can be indefinitely just commanded from Washington, D.C. without intense conflict and strife? Does anyone really believe that we can somehow unite together under the U.S. state that endlessly divides us? Rich versus poor, black versus white, Hispanics versus Anglos, men versus women, old versus young, secularists versus Christians, gays versus traditionalists, taxpayers versus entitlement recipients, urban versus rural, red state versus blue state, and political class versus everybody? Well, frankly, it seems clear that the federal government's hell bent on Balkanizing us anyway. So why not seek out ways to split apart rationally and nonviolently? Why dismiss the session the pragmatic alternative that's staring us all in the face? Now, since most of us in this room later Americans, although I'm told we have an Aussie here as well, somewhere he's missing the Australian Open this afternoon, so my focus today will be on the political and cultural situation here at home. But the same principles of self-ownership and self-determination apply universally, whether we're considering Texas independence or dozens of active breakaway movements in places like Scotland, in Venice, in Catalonia, in Belgium. And I truly believe that secession movements, both here and abroad, represent the last best hope for reclaiming our birthright, the great classical liberal tradition, and the civilization it made possible. In a world gone mad with state power, secession offers hope that truly liberal societies, organized around civil society and markets, rather than central governments, can still exist. Fair enough, but I know what you're all thinking. You're thinking how could this really happen? Is this possible? Wouldn't creating a viable secession movement in the U.S. necessarily mean convincing a majority of Americans, or at least a majority of the electorate, to join a mass political campaign much like a presidential election? Well, I say no. Building a libertarian secession movement need not involve mass political organizing. In fact, national political movements that pander to the left and to the right may well be hopelessly naive and wasteful of time and resources. Instead, our focus should be on hyper-localized resistance to the federal government in the form of a bottom-up revolution, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe terms it. Now, Hoppe counts us to use what little daylight the state affords us defensively. So just as force is only justified in self-defense, the use of democratic means is justified only when used to achieve non-democratic, libertarian pro-property ends. In other words, a bottom-up revolution employs both persuasion and democratic mechanisms to succeed at the individual, the family, the community, and the local level, in a million ways that involve turning our backs on the central government rather than attempting to bend its will. Now, secession properly understood, in my view, means withdrawing consent and walking away from D.C., not trying to capture it politically and convert the king. So why is the road to secession not political, at least at the national level? Frankly, having spent a few years in Washington, I would say that any notion of a takeover of the political apparatus in D.C. is fantasy. And even if a political sea change were to occur, the army of 4.3 million federal employees is not simply going to disappear overnight. So convincing libertarians to adopt a libertarian political system, if such an oxymoron could even exist, is a hopeless endeavor, at least in our current culture. And I'm sure we all understand that politics is a trailing indicator, right? Culture leads, politics follows. There can't be a political sea change in America unless and until there's a philosophical and educational and a cultural sea change. And over the past 100 years, progressives, and I use that term euphemistically as it's used commonly today, progressives have overtaken education, media, fine arts, literature, pop culture, and thus as a result, they've overtaken politics, not the other way around. So this is why our movement, the libertarian movement, must be a battle for hearts and minds. It must be an intellectual revolution because right now, bad ideas run the world. We can't expect a libertarian political miracle to happen in an ill libertarian society. Don't get me wrong, I think the libertarian movement's growing, I think our philosophy is winning, I think we are winning hearts and minds. This is a time for boldness, not pessimism. But I question whether libertarianism will ever be a mass, which is to say majority political movement. I mean, some people will always support the state. And we shouldn't kid ourselves about this. It really doesn't matter why. Is it genetic? Is it something in our DNA that makes us inclined to be libertarians or status? Is it environmental factors? Is it family influences? Is it bad schools? Is it media influences or is it simply some innate human desire to seek security, the false security blanket of the state? Maybe we'll never know. But we make a fatal mistake when we water down our message, when we dilute it, to seek approval from people who seemingly are hardwired to oppose us in our arguments no matter what. And we waste precious time and energy. What's important is not convincing those who fundamentally disagree with us. What's important is the degree to which we can extract ourselves from their political control. And this is why secession is a tactically superior approach in my view. It is far less dawning to convince liberty-minded people to walk away from the state than to convince those with a status mindset to change. Now, I have to come back to Hoppe. And he raises a question that some of you are thinking in your minds again is, what about the federalis? Wouldn't the federalis simply crush any such attempt at localize secession? Hoppe asks. Well, I'll quote him a little more. He says, well, he says this with a German accent. He says, they surely would like to, but whether or not they can actually do so is an entirely different question. It is only necessary to recognize that the members of the governmental apparatus always represent, even under conditions of democracy, a very small proportion of the total population. So Hoppe envisions a growing number of what he calls implicitly seceded territories, engaging in non-compliance with federal authority. He continues, without local enforcement by compliant local authorities, the will of the central government is not much more than hot air. It would be prudent, he continues, to avoid a direct confrontation with the central government and not openly denounce its authority. I think we can all agree with that. Rather, it seems advisable to engage in a policy of passive resistance and non-cooperation. One simply stops to help in the enforcement in each and every federal law. Now, some of our conservative friends like to talk a good game when it came to Obamacare on that very notion. And finally, Hoppe concludes, now you have to bear with him here that he was speaking in the mid-1990s for context. Waco, a tiny group of freaks, is one thing. But to occupy or to wipe out a significantly large group of normal, accomplished, upstanding citizens is quite another and quite a more difficult thing. Now, you may disagree with Dr. Hoppe as to the degree to which the federal government would actively order military violence to tamp down any secessionist hotspots. But his larger point is unassailable. The regime is largely an illusion, and consent to its authority is largely based on fear, not respect. Eliminate the illusion of benevolence and omnipotence, and consent quickly crumbles. So imagine what a committed cadre of coordinated libertarians could achieve in America. Ten percent of the U.S. population, or roughly 32 million people, would be an unstoppable force of nonviolent withdrawal from the federal Leviathan. And as Hoppe posits, no easy matter for the state to arrest or attack large groups of citizens. And as American history teaches our own history, the majority of people in any conflict are likely to be fence sitters rather than antagonists. Now, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about our friends on the left and right. And one of the great ironies of our time is that both the political left and right complained bitterly about the other, but steadfastly refused to consider, once again, the obvious solutions daring us in the face. Now, the left, you know, God love them, one might think that progressives would champion states' rights and the Tenth Amendment because it would liberate them from the Neanderthal right-wingers who stand in the way of their progressive utopia. You know, imagine California Massachusetts having every progressive policy firmly in place without any preemptive federal legislation to worry about, without having to worry about federal courts, and without having to share federal tax revenues with the hated red states. Imagine the 11 counties that make up the San Francisco Bay Area voting for whatever they wanted in their own little world. These are counties that routinely, overwhelmingly, send Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi to the U.S. Senate. These are counties that overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama. What would be so wrong with them having things the way they want? But if you ask a progressive, what would be so wrong with the Salt Lake City Provo area in Utah having things the way it wants, then all of a sudden progressives aren't so progressive. They strongly oppose federalism in states' rights, much less secession. And the reason, of course, is that progressives think they're winning. They don't intend for a minute to let any of us just walk away from what they've got planned for us. So democracy is the great political shibboleth, the great orthodoxy of our time, and it's supposed champions on the left can't abide true localized democracy, which is all secession really is. They're interested in democracy when the vote goes their way, and then only at the most attenuated federal level, or if they could have it their way at the international level. The last thing they want is local control over anything. They're the great centralizers and consolidators of state power, and live and let live is just not in their DNA. All you need to know about progressives is this. In Ron Paul's America, vast areas, whole cities, whole regions could collectively get together on a voluntary basis and have Obamacare or single payer healthcare or any system they might want for their healthcare. And nobody in a Ron Paul administration would bother them one-wit. But in Barack Obama's America, nobody in Utah can walk away from Obamacare. So it's a one-way street. Now I'd like to say that I have better news to report about our conservative friends, but I don't. Our friends on the right are scarcely better. Many conservatives are still hopelessly wedded to the Lincoln myth and remain enthralled to the central welfare state no matter the cost. As an example, consider the Scottish referendum that took place back in September. It's something I watched avidly enjoyed it. And I got two separate arguments from conservatives and even some libertarians. Some conservatives said, well gee whiz Jeff, you've got one state right now in Westminster controlling the UK, and then you're going to have two states. So libertarians ought not to be out there promoting more states on the world map. But reducing the size and scope of any single state's dominion is healthy for liberty because it leads us closer to the ultimate goal of self-determination at the individual level, granting each of a sovereignty over our lives. And again quoting Mises from liberalism, if we were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. You know the other argument I heard from conservatives is that well gee whiz, what if a secession movement results in a more liberal government in the new territory and the people there actually end up with less freedom? That's not very libertarian. And of course this was actually possibly the case in Scotland that the younger people who voted overwhelmingly for the secession referendum consider the London government and Westminster far too conservative. They were much more to the left. Their vision is for a Scotland that is a Scandinavian type social welfare state. They hated being yoked to London, and they wanted to be yoked to Brussels. So had that secession referendum passed in Scotland, the Scots might very well have ended up with less freedom within the confines of Scotland. But I would ask everyone in this room to say if those 11 aforementioned counties in San Francisco were to break away from the rest of California or to break away from the rest of the United States, wouldn't the rest of California be better off without those 11 San Francisco Bay Area counties? So what neither progressives nor conservatives understand or worse maybe they do understand is that secession provides a mechanism for real diversity. A world where we are not all yoked together provides a way for people with widely divergent views and interests to live peaceably as neighbors instead of suffering under one commanding central government that pits them against each other. But ultimately the wisdom of secession begins and ends with you. Bad ideas run the world, but must they run your world? So this is the question we all have to ask ourselves today. How seriously are we willing to take our right of self-determination and what are we willing to do to assert it? And I submit that secession really begins at home with the things we can all do to remove and distance ourselves from the state authority quietly, non-violently, inexorably. Like the state is crumbling all around us with its own fiscal mess, its monetary system. We don't need to win control of D.C. We just need to make sure that none of us go down with it. So in closing, let me make a few humble suggestions for beginning a journey of personal secession. Now not all of these may apply to you. No one can judge or decide what's best for you in terms of your own personal circumstances and your family. But all of us can play a role in a bottom-up revolution by doing everything in our power to withdraw our consent from the state. First, I would advise you to secede from intellectual isolation. Talk to like-minded friends, family, and neighbors, whether physically or virtually, to spread liberty and cultivate relationships and alliance. The state prefers to have us atomized without a strong family structure or social network. Succeed from dependency. Become as self-sufficient as possible with regard to food, fuel, water, cash, firearms, and physical security at home. Resist being reliant on government in the event of a natural disaster or a bank crisis or the like. Succeed from mainstream media, which promotes the state in a million different ways. Ditch cable, ditch CNN, ditch the major newspapers. Find your own sources of information in this internet age, and take advantage of a luxury previous generations didn't enjoy in that regard. Succeed from state control of your kids by homeschooling or unschooling them. And if you're really in a pinch, both Tom Woods and Ron Paul would be happy to help you in that regard. Succeed from college by rejecting mainstream academia and its student loan trap. Educate yourself using online learning platforms, retaining technical credentials, or simply reading as much as you can. Succeed from the U.S. dollar by owning physical precious metals, by owning assets denominated in foreign currencies, and by owning assets abroad. Succeed from the federal tax and regulatory regimes by organizing your business and your personal lives to be as tax-efficient and unobtrusive as possible. Succeed from the legal system by legally protecting your assets from rapacious lawsuits and probate courts as much as possible. Succeed from the state health care racket by taking control of your health, taking responsibility for your health, and questioning the medical orthodoxy. Now this doesn't apply to Texans, but Succeed from your state by moving to another state with a better tax and regulatory environment, better homeschooling laws, better gun laws, maybe one with just more like-minded people, more golf courses per capita. And Maine is very low on that list. Succeed from political uncertainty in the U.S. by obtaining a second passport, or Succeed from the U.S. all together by expatriating. It's up to you. None of us can make these decisions for you. These are suggestions. But most of all, Succeed from the mindset that government is all-powerful or too formidable to be overcome. The state is nothing more than Bastiat's great fiction, or Murray's gang of thieves writ large. Let's not give it the power to make us unhappy or pessimistic. All of us, regardless of our personal circumstances or our ideological bent, are married to a very violent, abusive spendthrift. It's time, ladies and gentlemen, to get a divorce from D.C. Thank you.