The burden of proof sure as hell is not the way you say it is. Democracy does not equal having a majority gets whatever the heck you want. It is rule of laws, both written and unwritten.
"Democracy is what I say it is!"
A secession, even one endorsed by a majority of the seceding area, would be a flagrant violation of many agreements and obligations entered into in good faith. For starters the substantial unionist minority would be grossly infringed upon, being deprived the right to maintain their citizenship in the status quo, the most fundamental right we have.
Yet the substantial separatist
majority is grossly infringed upon by not being allowed to secede.
One could just as easily say the substantial upper to upper-middle class minority is grossly infringed upon when they get taxed at the whims of the poor, or the substantial lumberjack/industry related minorities are grossly infringed upon when environmental standards are brought into being.
Certainly, they could maintain their citizenship. Ever heard of dual citizenship?
It's not incumbent on us to say why the majority can't do whatever they want, it's incumbent on you to say why the minority should be made to suffer so greatly.
Uh, what?
Add onto that the massive breach of faith with the rest of the country which has faithfully honored the rights of the area that now wants out.
Yeah, those dirty secessionists! The rest of the Union faithfully
didn't enslave, pillage, or otherwise harm them! How dare they try to leave!
There would be nothing democratic about such an action. Democracy empowers the citizens, not makes them victims to extralegal processes that overturn the civil order on the flimsiest of grounds. If you want a democratic secession then it needs to be built on democratic grounds. Show systematic disenfranchisement. Show there is not fair recourse through the existing channels. Show that the breach of good faith lies not with those seceding. If you can not show these things then what you are proposing is not democracy, it's a power grab.
What you're describing is not democracy. Allow me:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority
Democracy is not necessarily moral, correct, or ethical. The majority is not always right. Whether they want to secede because they have a deep seated distrust of the federal government, because they were victimized by the federal government, or because they think the flag is ugly is utterly irrelevant. Certainly, the separation of powers exists to prevent mob rule, but that is hardly a bulletproof method of ensuring no minorities are harmed if the past two centuries are anything to go by.
Seems to me like you're just assigning positive values to Democracy and arbitrarily deciding what is or isn't democratic (when it's fairly clear cut generally).
The classical liberals who you libertarians claim to love all wrote about how you don't go rewriting the social contract on a whim. Even the downright anarchistic Rousseau, who said that people have the right to leave the state, said that they can not desert their obligations when you do so. A liberal society is not a society where laws don't constrain our actions. It's a society where bad laws don't constrain our actions. So if you claim you should be able to ignore the law without first showing that the law is unjust then you are rejecting the fundamental principles of democratic government.
Rousseau was not a classical liberal. Try again. Under both classical liberal and libertarian views, there is no such thing as a social contract.
Besides that, there are classical liberals that actually did support infinite secession on the principle of self-ownership, making your point invalid.
tl;rd Read any political philosophy from the past 400 years and get back to us, thx.
tl;dr Read the dictionary and find out what "Democracy" means
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 751999 times)