Instapundit Glenn Reynolds reacts to someone’s claim to have unilaterally seceded personally, with the following comment.
I know a lot of people who are doing that on a personal level. I don’t think, by the way, that actual secession is a good idea, or would work.
I write to react to Reynolds’ disagreement with the idea “that actual secession is a good idea, or would work.” I remain unconvinced it is a good idea, it could either work or degenerate into a bloody mess.
The models one would hope to emulate would be the peaceful separation of the two parts of the former Czechoslovakia or the split of Singapore from Malaysia. The model one would hope to avoid is the former Yugoslavia whose splitting led to civil war, modest-scale genocide, war crimes, and lasting rancor. Our own former civil war and its aftermath were no picnic either.
In other words, we know of examples where it was peaceful, and others where it was not. In spite of which uncertainty I believe its occurrence is a more-than-remote possibility.
