 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues Podcast. I'm Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute. Well, the Wall Street Journal published an article by their editorial board on the recent Spanish elections. The left-wing parties did not do well, and they don't have a prime minister right now. Initially, they were optimistic that center-right parties did much better than in the past and the far-swing parties didn't do great either, but this left a power vacuum in Spain and has left the political parties from the Cantillon and the Basque regions in the position to be king-makers. Prime Minister Sanchez and the socialist might actually make concessions to these separatist groups in order to maintain power. And the Wall Street Journal worries that if this is the case, if the left-wingers are willing to make concessions to these separatist regional parties, what might happen? Might Belgium make concessions to the Flemish independent movement? Or what about the European Union and others? Might we get more chaos like we did with Brexit? And this is particularly important in Spain where the national debt there has doubled since the pigs' debt crisis of 2009, so there's plenty of fuel for the fire. The Wall Street Journal editorial board is worried that this independence and separatist movements might spread. And so they're very fearful and they're trying to spread that fear to their readers that the right-wing is not a threat and that the left-wing, which is OK with them, is now a threat because it's bargaining with these separatists. They note that a lot is riding on this throughout the world. In other words, there's a lot to be fearful for. But here at the Minor Issues podcast, we like to talk about these issues and we wonder if separation is a solution or if it's the best solution. Admitting, of course, that there are dangers because, of course, if we don't solve these problems, you can result in revolutions and civil war or even worse. So separatist movements indicate the need to change policy in the direction of nonviolent, mutually beneficial policy changes, that these separatist groups organize themselves around and also revolutionary movements organize themselves around. Power always wants union. They always want to spread their power and consolidate their power. Freedom really wants separation, but they will accept less government, less central direction, less government interference in their days. So if you want to suppress separation movements, just use less government intervention, more independence. And there's problems around the world we see with the European Union, with NATO, with Ukraine and the Middle East and China. But all of these areas, the antagonism and the divisions could be tapped down with more concessions, more decentralization, more freedom, more autonomy, more independence versus dependency on central authority. And the union and the power movements, the central controlling movements of course always want to spread fear about the desire of people for independence and freedom. They often result to fear mongering, to name calling, and of course the big one is the Nazi bugaboo thing. But I think we should take the separatist movement, which exists around the world if you want to go to Wikipedia and look it up. There are separatist movements in almost every country, in a lot of states here in the United States, but all of that tends to vanish, disappear and become less powerful if we give individuals and localities more freedom, more control, and less central control over the economy and their daily lives.