Spain’s Catalan Separatist Leaders Found Guilty of Sedition

Spain’s highest court sentenced nine Catalan separatist leaders to between nine and 13 years in jail for their role in an illegal independence referendum, reports The Wall Street Journal.

I have never been a big fan of getting thrown in jail as a means of political protest. Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises never ended up in jail and they have probably done more in recent decades to advance libertarian thinking than almost anyone else.


Which is why I found commentary by Saul Alinsky about getting thrown in jail quite interesting.

Alinsky was a very skilled major league lefty rabble-rouser, who influenced both President Obama and Hillary Clinton. In his book, Rules for Radicals, he was always calculating, even when it came to protests that could put you in jail. He wrote:

At the same time, the revolutionary leaders should make certain their publicized violations of are  so selected that their jail terms are relatively brief, from one day to two months. The trouble with a long sentence is that (a) a revolutionary is removed from action for such an extended period of time that he loses touch, and (b) if you are gone long enough everybody forgets about you.

And that's in addition to my take that the secessionists wanted to take Catalonia in a more oppressive direction (see: When It Comes to Catalonia, Libertarians Shouldn't Make the Charles Lindbergh Error).

Anyway, the real battle is the high-level intellectual battle. Any time the masses are out in the streets, you know they are only carrying on demands first developed at the intellectual level, be the demands good or bad.

-RW