Take a good deep breath.
Can you smell what’s in the air?
Can you describe it?
It smells like secession!
AHHHHHHH!
Smells good.Ever since last Tuesday’s election, not just the smell but also actual talk of secession is in the air. Given the divided polarization of the country, not seen in such stark terms since the War Between the States, some Democrats and other leftists have openly talking about taking their Blue regions out of these United States, perhaps its declaring their own independence or joining Canada. No long is secession confided to the so-called “fever swamps” of the right. Secession now spans the entire political spectrum.
Actually, most of it is just knee-jerk reaction BS that will come to nothing (although to be fair, many in the Red states would be talking the same way if Kerry had won.) But such talk may have a positive outcome as it reintroduces the terms of states rights and decentralization into the leftist lexicon. They will find them to be much more practical.
Of course to the left, states rights have been dirty words ever since Hubert Humphrey told the Democratic National Convention of 1948 that the Democratic Party had to “walk out of the darkness of states right and into the light of human rights.” That bad and or misguided men stole such a phrase for their own selfish purposes didn’t stop Humphrey and the leftists from throwing the baby out with the bathwater. State rights became a code word for racism, or smeared to be more like it.
But times change and now that the Democrats and the lefts finds itself away from the national levers of power for the time being, perhaps they can discover the benefits of decentralization. Perhaps they will realize states rights can be a positive good for their own programme instead of being dismissed out of hand, especially within the regions and cities they already control.
In fact this process has already begun. If it is true that the whole issue of gay marriage turned the election, it was originally a state and local issue: The Massachusetts Supreme Court decision, the granting of marriage licenses by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome and the mayor of New Paltz, NY. Conservatives have shown themselves to be hypocrites call for constitutional amendments and whole series of issues that can be settled statewide (flag burning, school prayer, abortion, gay marriage etc.). They’ve shown themselves to be hypocrites in my home state of Wisconsin as well, trying to pass legislation to restrict cities from setting their own minimum wage standards and trying to tell localities through state constitutional amendments how much they can spend and raise revenues in their own budgets.
Liberalism has always been associated with centralization. But that’s not always true. Robert M. “Fighting Bob” LaFollette was a leftist but he believed in communitarian progressivism in contrast with so-called nationalism of progressives of Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson. The phrase “power to the people,” came from the left in 1960s rebelling against the centralization of American life during the Cold War and the Great Society. There is plenty of strains of decentralization within the speech of someone like the late Sen. Paul Wellstone. But inevitably the big government, national tendencies to solve problems get in the way.
One case example of the left’s new found discovery of decentralization could come in New Hampshire. The Free State Project is trying to set up shop there with their decentralist ideology in a state who’s motto is “Live Free or Die.” However, the Granite State may very well be heading down the road of being a permanent blue state due to changes in demographics. In that case, it would behoove the FSP to at least reach out to the new Democratic governor and try find common ground on decentralization issues. Maybe they could convince him to tell Feds to take their No Child Left Behind Act and stuff it! We’ll educate our children the way we see fit. Or maybe the new governor will tell President Bush II that he won’t allow the state’s National Guard to be sent on any more foreign adventures without a Declaration of War as is constitutionally required. These are just two of many issues that could see new expansion of decentralization across the political spectrum.
Maybe then the left will realize their best interests lie not in staging any more marches on Washington for any number of issues, but marching on city hall or on the state capital. Or better than marching and protesting, working within that hall or capital to accomplish what they want. With that in mind, the more the left realizes decentralization may actually work for them, the better off the country will be. Fear of the other side and they will do in power is what drives the polarization of our country. If both sides could drop their “Be Like us or Else!” mentalities that governs their thinking for more “Let Utah Be Utah and San Francisco be San Francisco” as Bill Kauffman would say, perhaps we could all get along a lot better, share this big country of ours, and not feel we have to move to Canada or commit suicide if one side or the other loses an election.
So leftists, let me introduce you to writings of Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, give you a copy of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, read to you John C. Calhoun’s Fort Hill Address of 1831, and give you a portrait of John Randolph. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?
Take a good deep breath again.
Can you smell what’s in the air?
Can you describe it?
It smells like decentralization!
AHHHHHHH!
Smells good.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”