@Jason: The contradiction is “anti-federal statist.” In for a penny, in for a pound.

Any argument that could justify a nonconsensual state the size of a mid-sized European country can just as easily justify a nonconsensual federation of states the size of a continent. Any argument that could justify state secession from the federation is just as good an argument, if carried through logically, for justifying community secession from the state, or individual secession from any and all levels of government everywhere.

Scheule:

There’s hypocrisy in the former–anti-liberty actions are obviously not what pro-liberty rhetoric promises, but segregation, slavery, the Confederacy are all legitimate instances of decentralization

No they aren’t.

Just ask a black man who tried to secede from the Dixie slave system, or a white man who tried to join up with secessionist blacks and form a break-away republic in the Appalachians. See what they got for their trouble.

The problem with the Confederates and their so-called “decentralist” and predecessors, is that they weren’t nearly decentralist enough. A “states’ rights” position, sure, but who gave you the idea that preserving the prerogatives of big centralized states, as large as mid-sized European countries and ruled from the state capitol by a handful of racially, sexually and economically privileged oligarchs, counts as a non-hypocritical form of decentralism?