[extropy-chat] FSP: Killington Votes to Secede

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Fri Mar 5 00:03:13 UTC 2004


--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ah, that was a statement by Adrian, I think.

That it was.

> I had said that essentially any state that was
> created by an act of
> secession out of the territory of another state
> (Vermont, West
> Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri,
> Arkansas, Kansas,
> Washington, etc...) must implicitly recognise the
> right of its people
> to secede, since the basis for all government here
> in the US is that no
> government can have a right that is not delegated to
> it by the people
> as individuals. If they do not recognise such a
> right, then their own
> legitimacy is at stake, else they claim some other
> source of their
> authority than the people, i.e. obvious tyranny.

...and this is what I was responding to.  While they
do recognize the right of the people to secede,
California and most of the other states near the
Pacific (I'm not certain about other states) require
geographic relocation as part of this.  I.e., the only
way that most people (exempting foreign dignitaries,
et al) are allowed to not be subject to California's
laws is to not be in California.  (With varying
definitions for acts which can affect people or
property in California without the actor being
physically within the borders.)

Seceding in the normal sense, i.e. without emigration,
is prohibited even though this is the sense in which
the states seceded from their original territories.
This is prohibited without any perceived threat to
the states' own legitimacy, in part because of the
nature of the non-state territory from which they
seceded, and in part due to the sheer length of time
that has passed since that act.



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