The Scottish Disease

The Scots aren’t alone in dreaming of secession.

On Thursday, Scotland will decide whether it intends to remain part of the United Kingdom or go its own way as a separate nation. Inspired, Catalonia has renewed its campaign for independence from Spain. Earlier this week, it became clear that San Francisco venture capitalist Tim Draper’s “Six Californias”initiative — which would have seen the state subdivided into six new polities, in effect allowing affluent Silicon Valley to secede from the state’s poor interior and the vulgarians down south — would not proceed to the ballot, having failed to secure sufficient signatures in the petition stage. Secession talk, indulged with varying degrees of sincerity, is a staple of the culture of my home state of Texas. Soy-latte radicals dream of a great liberal secession from red-state rednecks. The libertarian economist Michael S. Rozeff writes wistfully of personal secession, the“panarchism” of Paul Émile de Puydt.

More