Secession All the Way Down

Abstract

American libertarianism is both an ideology and an identity of separation. This chapter shows how libertarians litigated the social contract generally and the American social contract specifically. It examines the key thinkers and core texts of American libertarianism to explore how two rhetorical resources, natural rights philosophy and early American legal and cultural history, have enabled the libertarian case for ignoring the state. They pulled from global examples of statist oppression and Enlightenment-inspired language of first principles—“Absolute power corrupts absolutely”—but they also brought these analogies and commonplaces to bear domestically with endless citations of Thomas Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists, data mining the ratification and meaning of the Constitution, and reproaches of a thick roster of American autocrats. American libertarians used both arguments for majority-rules as well as arguments for minority rights to justify secession, and they employed America’s Founding language to unsettle national foundations.