• Allen Buchanan was amongst the first to discuss secession as an individual issue and provided a foundation for terms used to discuss secession• When one culture threatens the integrity of another culture within a state, the risk of civil war ensues which may be just as bad as the threats associated witheasy secession.• A state need not have always have a necessarily a single culture so long as respect for both cultures and their cultural integrity within a state is maintained.Often in this case a larger hybrid culture may often be created. People can disagree and still respect and preserve’s each other’s identity. Such a case canarise provided that the interests in which the state is concerned with is not contingent upon a particular culture’s interests, but rather much broader humaninterests such as “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness (This last one does not suggest any particular path to happiness, but the ability andopportunity to pursue happiness)"• A problem for associative group rights theories of secession is how do we get from justifying sovereignty over one’s self, to sovereignty over one’s land thatindividuals want to take when seceding.• One way to defend ascriptive group rights theories is to say that groups have independent moral standing apart from the morals of the individuals thatcomprise it• Groups have moral standing in the preservation of their interests• Waldren challenges the connection between the individual and the group• Communititarian - Individual is defined by his relationship to the community• Waldren’s idea is that in the modern world individuals don’t necessarily feel free of community, but that they don’t stand in relation to small individualcommunities. He defends that our culture is a mixture and that we are better off with that. The modern individual is a mosaic of cultural personalities andvalues.• The cosmopolitan alternative undermines the traditional alternative• as soon as someone is exposed to the cosmopolitan view, they are out of the traditional viewpoint• Waldren gives a number of reasons for going for the communitarian view, but he does not think they are good reasons• One argument (that comes form Raz and Margalit) is that group membership is necessary for flourishing in identification with a group. More aboutsubjective satisfaction• Another (from Kymlicka) is the argument that people make their own choices and shape their own lives and in order to do this best we need access to clearalternatives and other options to make the best choices. Diversity of available group membership is necessary for choice.• Another argument is that cutting a person off from one’s roots makes a person worse off. A life not anchored in tradition is shallow and inauthentic. Moreabout objective goodness.• Waldren points out that the broader super culture makes it possible for people to continue their traditions, but that those people who just be blindingthemselves to that super structure.• Another argument is the idea that a full-fledged cosmopolitanism is incoherent because an individual is defined by his culture. Individuals are constitutedby society.• I would say Waldren takes issue with the necessity of these clauses, not with the existence of