Franklin Salazar asks:The political divisions of nation states are hardly a fiction, political or otherwise. They are a convention, duly recognized by the powers that have care over the common good. And a necessary convention. It is important to be able to demarcate the lands under different sovereignties; it helps keep the peace, the basic prerequisite for the common good.
The United States and Mexico, and the settlers of Texas, recognized Texas as belonging to Mexico before the revolution. What the Indians, who had no concept like the Europeans of sovereignty, thought, is anyone's guess. But one would be hard put to prove, I think, that the Indian tribes of Texas would have been capable of maintaining the common good of the diverse population that had settled there. It was European political arrangements that were alone capable of maintaining the
common good, and so it is to those one must look, unless one is an anarchist.
Positive laws establishing the relations between nations are artificial, but not fictional. There is a common good within a political community, but there is also a common good among political communities. Territorial boundaries are the conventional way, established by a sort of positive law, to demarcate sovereignty. That sovereignty must be respected unless grave reasons determine otherwise.
One might argue that nation states are not natural, but, then, no political arrangement is natural, except insofar as the nature of man demands political arrangements. There is nothing inherently unjust in the nation state, as long as it respects a just subsidiarity in regards to the lower political arrangements within it.
Thus, by the convention recognized by all the political bodies of the time, Texas was part of Mexico. If one argues that the Texians had the right to separate from Mexico, one would have to show they had grave cause. One would have to show that the common good of Texas' inhabitants was seriously threatened by continued union with Mexico. Or one would have to show that the constitution of Mexico allowed for secession of regions. It's far from clear to me that there is a natural right to secession.
Since man is by nature a political animal, why do you write ‘except’?
Further, size is not accidental to the state. As Aristotle writes in
book 5 of the politics, to all things there is a limit. It’s not as if the
nation state can act according to subsidiarity as an overseer since it’s
unnatural limitlessness is contrary to subsidiarity. The nation-state attempts
to see with limitless eyes whereas man by nature sees within limit.
Mr. Zehnder responds:
I write "except" because particular political arrangements are the fruit of human reason. One does not find particular constitutions inscribed in the law of nature. I speak of "constitution" in the broader sense, not just in terms of a written document.
Nation states can be more or less centralized. One can conceive of a grouping of small political units, joined by similar racial descent and language, and united for certain specific purposes, such as common defense. The political unity so formed would be sovereign in relation to its specific ends, while the extent of its sway would be clearly limited. I would call such a thing a nation. I cannot see how, as along as it doesn't tresspass the limits of its competence, such a state would be unjust.
Prompting Mr. Salazar to write:
Mr. Zehnder: “The political unity so formed would be sovereign in relation
to its specific ends, while the extent of its sway would be clearly limited.”
Wouldn’t the sovereignty finally devolve back into the “small political units”? And if it does so devolve, how can it be said that the “political unity” has sovereignty as opposed to being an alliance of sovereigns since defense is inseparable from sovereignty?
For example, a father may send his children to school, but the act is a delegation of the inviolable authority to educate. Or a father may join with his neighbors in common defense against an aggressor, but the alliance is at best a delegation of the father’s duty to defend his family. In both instances the authority remains in its natural seat and is delegated.
And Mr. Zehnder's final reply:
Mr. Salazar,Mr. Zehnder is, incidentally, a contributor to Los Angeles Mission and San Francisco Faith.
There is a difference between a father's authority, which is pre-political and therefore inalienable, and a community's authority, which is in part artificial, formed by consent. While one might argue that the local community can never alienate certain aspects of its authority, by virtue of its entering into a common good of communities it takes on duties as well as rights. How these duties are to be carried out, for how long, under what conditions, can not be a matter of natural law but only of positive law. For instance, one nation may allow its constituent parts to secede from the national union, based upon the consent or lack thereof of the constituent communities, and another may not, again based on the communities' consent. One could imagine a situation where, for instance, a right of secession could be devastating to all communities involved. In such a case it is conceivable that the right would not be granted, and this would be just because the alternative would seriously harm the common good of all.
On many points I agree with Mr. Zehnder, especially on the matter of prudence--one may judge that it is inopportunte to secede at a particular moment in time because the negative effects would outweight the positive. Still, Mr. Salazar brings up the point of size, and whether it is reasonable to form such large, heavily centralized communities in the first place, if they go beyond what is necessary for self-sufficiency (and may even promote its degradation within the original units). If it was a mistake to form such a confederation, how can one undo it? And is it possible to do so in the case of the Unitd States, at the present moment? After all, how many states can provide for their basic necessites? On the other hand, just because a state is not self-sufficient, can it demand that another state remain in union with it within a larger body? Or could it not continue to meet its needs through commerce and trade? One could argue that a common currency not only facilitates the exchange of goods, but is necessary at the present time. However, if the central government (the Feds) fail to equalize differences in standard of living (which is not based, as far as I can tell, on the value of labor, as it should be primarily, despite unequal distribution of capital and assests), then is this argument not worthless?
Advocates of the Confederacy like Thomas DiLorenzo (who portrays Lincoln as a dictator in Lincoln Unmasked and The Real Lincoln) maintain that the right to secession was implied in the Constitution and never explicitly negated. Is there a natural right to secession? Mr. Zehnder is not sure. With respect to self-sufficient communities, true polities, I am inclined to think that even if there is not a natural right, it is more reasonable for it to aim for independence and sovereignty than to surrender that independence and sovereignty to a greater association, especially when doing so would destroy the self-sufficiency that it possesses and the possibility of attaining the higher goods to which it is ordered.
Alas, Mr. DiLorenzo is a member of The Mises Institute and a contributor to LewRockwell.com; he is a supporter of unfettered free market capitalism and a libertarian, as far as I can tell.
The King Lincoln archives at LewRockwell.
Someone once responded to my post at soompi about states' rights by recommending Lincoln's Constitution by Daniel Farber (UCB page, UMn page).
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