The American secessionist streak

"The deepest questions of human liberty and government facing our time go beyond right and left, and in fact have made the old left-right split meaningless and dead," the declaration read. "The privileges, monopolies and powers that private corporations have won from government threaten ... health, prosperity and liberty, and have already killed American self-government by the people." The answer, it went on, was that the American states "ought to be free and self-governing."

Radical anarchists? Maybe, but there is a movement to reform the government by secession. It has drawn attention lately only because Sarah Palin and her husband have been associated with the Alaskan Independence Party which wants to put a vote for Alaskan secession on the ballot.