Whether or not one believes it is "dumb" (oh, the irony), we still have to discuss whether or not it is relevant. If the declaration of Independents is relevant, and if not, why.
I read this during my morning "news" session and i think it poses some good questions and insight on secession.
Is Secession a Right? - David Gordon - Mises Daily
Indeed, the right of secession follows at once from the basic rights defended by classical liberalism. As even Macaulay's schoolboy knows, classical liberalism begins with the principle of self-ownership: each person is the rightful owner of his or her own body. Together with this right, according to classical liberals from Locke to Rothbard, goes the right to appropriate unowned property.
In this view, government occupies a strictly ancillary role. It exists to protect the rights that individuals possess independently — it is not the source of these rights. As the Declaration of Independence puts it, "to secure these rights [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from consent of the governed."
But what has all this to do with secession? The connection, I suggest, is obvious: if government does not protect the rights of individuals, then individuals may end their allegiance to it. And one form this renunciation may take is secession — a group may renounce its allegiance to its government and form a new government. (It is not, of course, the only form. A group can overthrow its government altogether, rather than merely abjure its authority over them.)
The Declaration of Independence adopts just this position: whenever a government "becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." But the American colonists did not attempt to abolish the British government; rather, they "altered" it by withdrawal of the colonies from its authority. In brief, they seceded from Britain. As such, the right of secession lies at the heart of our country's legitimacy. Deny it, and you must reject the American founding.
..Regardless of one's opinion of Jefferson and the Continental Congress, is it not consistent to accept natural rights, as conceived of by classical liberals, but refuse to recognize a right of secession?
First, the position might hold that even if the government violates the rights it was established to secure, its subjects may not depart from it. But this is a strange contention: government exists for certain purposes, but it may continue unabated even if it acts against these very aims.
....those who deny the right of secession have the burden of advancing a rationale for their view. Why should supporters of natural rights reject the right of secession?
Does not the Declaration itself say that governments should not be changed for "Light and transient causes"?
This position no doubt is stronger than the utter repudiation of secession, but we must once more inquire: What is its justification? Prima facie, it appears that to hold that a group may remove itself from a government's authority whenever it pleases is more in line with classical liberalism's purely functional view of government. To deny this insinuates that the state is something other than a tool to secure rights.
Just as an individual need not retain the services of a business, but may change to another, why may not a group switch protective agencies?
Further, the Declaration of Independence need not be read to endorse only a limited right of secession. The passage that refers to light and transient causes forms part of a discussion of when change of government is prudent, but the issue that concerns us here is not prudence, but rights. Many exercises of one's rights are imprudent — I may have the "right" to walk into oncoming traffic, if the signal is in my favor — but I have these rights regardless. Thus, a group may secede imprudently, but act within its rights.
Once more: If not, why not?
Allen Buchanan, whose Secession is the most influential discussion of our topic in contemporary American philosophy, rejects the legitimacy of Southern secession in 1861 on the grounds just suggested.[1] Since slavery violated rights, no slaveholding state had the right to leave the Union. But why does this follow? (Incidentally, Buchanan holds that Southern secession, absent slavery, would have been justifiable.) Clearly, Buchanan's discussion of the Southern case would have gained from close attention to the contemporary arguments of the Southern secessionists.
Suppose that a group which violates individual rights secedes. May the government formerly in authority interfere only to the extent necessary to secure the rights of those put at risk by the secession?
Some have held that the Southern states acted "undemocratically" in refusing to accept the results of the election of 1860. Lincoln, after all, received a plurality of the country's popular vote.
To a Misesian, the answer is obvious: so what? A majority (much less a plurality) has no right to coerce dissenters. Further, the argument fails on its own terms. It was not undemocratic to secede. The Southern states did not deny that Lincoln was in fact the rightfully elected president. Rather, they wanted out just because he was. Democracy would oblige them only to acknowledge Lincoln's authority had they chosen to remain in the Union.
The rest at the link
