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I should certainly thank you for your kind words about the Awdal Roads Company in your recent essay on secession (TLE #131). It should go without saying that I think the project is legitimate, too. While a good many Americans have lived in Somalia, and some still do, it is not the case that we are asking anyone of the American libertarian persuasion to live there. Rather, we are discussing a country of great heritage, centuries old, called Awdal.

Nor would we recklessly suggest that any Americans seeking freedom pack up their kit bags and fly to Awdal today. Instead, we are working on a free zone connected to a free port. It is our intention to have a system of laws suited to the interests of liberty loving people, with private administration of all services. The negotiations are in process, and take time.

Somalia as it has previously been conceived doesn't exist. It ceased to exist, formally, in 1991, when its dictator was ousted. To speak of Somali people is sensible, to speak of Somali territories is practical, and to speak of Somalia, as if the Democratic Republic of Somalia still exists, is rather sad. It happens, quite often, but it reminds me of Southerners still proudly speaking of the Confederacy.

In your article, which is a very good one, you suggest that the USA would not send in troops to squash a rebellion or secession movement. If I were to refer to the events of 28 February 1993 in Mt. Carmel, Texas, all kinds of objections would arise as to why the heavily armed Branch Davidians were not a separatist movement. Of course, they are dead, now, so such discussions are largely academic. The official policy of the USA remains to this day one of defending the actions taken in February and April of 1993.

Similar actions took place in April and May of 1997 in Fort Davis, Texas, against the oddball R. L. McLaren and his faction of the Republic of Texas, and again in recent memory to the Freemen of Montana, and is happening now to a guy in East Texas, Joe Gray as I recall his name. The entire purpose of agencies like the FBI and the BATF is to oppose armed, organized resistance to the USA government. Turning a blind eye to these events is going to get people killed. Again.

Nor is it the case that the analogy to Milosevic holds. As you say, the system of internationalist socialist governance is set up to do the bidding of people in places of power, like Washington, DC. People from scruffy little countries like Serbia get hauled before international tribunals, where the media can tut their collective tongues. Janet Reno and Bill Clinton will never face such a tribunal, not in the Hague. Possibly in what remains of a post-war DC, though that is stretching a point.

In the event you get some enthusiastic support for your effort, I would strongly urge you to read the book How to Start Your Own Country by Erwin Strauss, available from Loompanics and other fine booksellers. Strauss treats ideas like "vo nu" or disappearing from the system, as well as the permanent traveller phenomenon with considerable attention to detail. He also ruthlessly separates the wheat from the chaff in new country efforts.

I would also suggest you look at the OECD attacks on tax havens as a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There are people seriously working to demonstrate the advantages of digital encryption, tax havens, global telecomm, and I know a great many of them. Economic sanctions against places like Guernsey, Anguilla, and Singapore really don't have much significance to them. At the same time, there are billions of dollars locked away in complete safety, and more going underground all the time. The rate is accelerating tremendously.

Finally, you had me going, right up to the very end. You had me excited, ready to join, ready to be a part of yet another movement toward secession. Right up until you said we would vote on where to move to.

Voting is a ritual combat system to decide things we don't have a good way to evaluate and understand. It is used to count noses, as if that were important. In war, it might be, but there are numerous examples of wars won by smaller forces. The country of Monaco still exists because Grimaldi walked in, alone, to a fortress, and then let in a small team.

Moreover, in choosing a site for democratically elected takeover, great attention should be focused on winning. Not winning elections, which are ritual combat, rigged vote counts, and unlikely to play a major role in your success. (Name the election between 1773 and 1781 that counted the noses among 3 million North American colonists to settle the matter of independence.) But winning freedom, which is where it matters.

Choose a territory by using reason. Voting is not the accumulation of reason. If people cannot give good arguments about why things should go their way, they are probably a poor judge of how the decision should be made. Voters are as likely to vote for a warm climate as a cold one, as likely to vote for their neighborhood as not, and may have completely irrational reasons; libertarians are not that different from other voters.

Wyoming and Idaho have good prospects, owing to their size, mountainous terrain, low population, presence of lots of freedom enthusiasts (a friend of mine, Mark Laughlin, has a photo on one of his web sites of a liquor store in Pineland, Wyoming, the marquee of which reads "Who Is John Galt?"), lots of guns in the woods, distance from dead-center Washington, and other merits. There is even a chain of convenience stores in Wyoming which features in its advertising a cartoon character, Maverick, who is "for Western independence."

Military history is an important branch of political science. Picking the time and place of battles, and the rules of engagement, is the key to victory. Numerical superiority and brute force can win battles, but timing, location, and other tactical advantages often win out. It was not numerical superiority that won the Vietnam war for Vietnam, nor the war for Afghanistan for the Taliban. Terrain played a major role. One could go on and on. From Alexander's battles with the Persians to Henry at Agincourt, terrain and tactics have proven the equal to numbers. Not one victory has ever happened on a site which was chosen by polling the combatants.

Finally, I think you should be aware that there is a group which wants to take over, not a state, but a county, in Texas. You may have heard of the West Texas county of Loving, headquartered in Mentone, population 80, give or take 20. I admit to not having 2001 census data in front of me, and to not being willing to believe it if I did.

County governments have a good deal of power. They control many taxes, and collect certain others. Their police forces are entitled to surplus weaponry from the USA military, and Loving County Sheriff's department could make a good case for helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, battle tanks, and SWAT armament for fighting the drug war, it being reasonably close to some drug traffic flows.

And, of course, a county government could be a proof of concept for you, much more readily attained than a state government. I don't happen to think Loving County has many terrain features going for it, but it is one of the lowest population counties West of the Mississippi, so as a proof of concept, it has merit. So, if you want to contact those folx, or the digital encryption guyz, or a large number of people enthusiastic about doing something useful in their own lifetimes, please let me know.

If your project takes up the question of whether voting is a sensible way to settle anything, I would be very interested.

Jason, let's do it. Let's create a free place on Earth. Then, let's do it again. With the Limon Real project, the efforts in Belize, the project in Romania, and a half dozen others, there are credible efforts to put new countries together. The USA presents particularly fierce and fearsome challenges to any such effort within its borders, but dozens of Indian nations eke out an existence, many with casino style and verve.

As I told an audience in France recently, the more places on Earth that become free, the better. And the sooner I'll start working on free places in space.

Regards,