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Tag Archives: Devolution

Toward a Detoxified, Humanized Federalism

28 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, Devolution, Federalism, Southern History, The Passing Scene, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

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Brexit, Demassification, Devolution, Federalism, Great Britain, Jim Langcuster, secession

pluribus-unumMuch like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square protests, the result of the 2016 European Union Referendum — Brexit, as it’s commonly called — will be one of those memories that stay with me the rest of my life.

Late in the night as the Leave vote amassed an insurmountable lead, I reflected on how Brexit likely would constitute a wakeup call not only for the European Union but possibly for the American Union too.

I was motivated as much as I was inspired by the results.  The next morning, I got busy setting up a devolutionary weblog as a forum for discussing how the Brexit outcome likely would affect federalism in the United States.

Reflecting weeks later on how the results of the referendum had galvanized Scottish nationalist sentiment, I also began to wonder if Britons would take up a serious discussion of drafting a constitution for a new federal British union encompassing England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. And this led me to speculate about whether such a union of sovereign states ultimately would inspire one or more American states to demand a return to the principles of state sovereignty enshrined in the Constitution, particularly in the Tenth Amendment.

Sclerotic, Dysfunctional American Federalism

Brexit should have been regarded as a wake-up call for all Americans.  Indeed, American federalism is arguably just as sclerotic and unresponsive to present-day needs as its European Union counterpart and perhaps equally as imperiled.

Challenges to American Federalism

Some of the maladies associated with American federalism date back as far as colonial times, while others have emerged considerably more recently. The deep cultural chasms stemming from the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam Conflict some 50 years ago certainly have contributed. But so have more recent technological advances, namely, the demassification of media that followed the expansion of cable television within the last 50 years and, more recently and significantly, digitization, particularly social media.

These new media, despite all the good that they have produced, have added an extra layer of complexity to our cultural and political discourse. For better or worse, they have enabled growing numbers of Americans to self-organize into a myriad of subcultures.

Demassification has also compounded the challenges of our current federal model. In the face of this demassification, our highly centralized and sclerotic federal system has only grown more unresponsive, unworkable and even toxic, contributing to the deep regional and cultural divisions, particularly as they are expressed at the national level.

Some readers may regard such disparaging talk about our federal system as shocking.  After all, many Americans tend to regard our Constitution and the institutions and mechanisms that developed out of it as truly singular, if not beyond reproach.  To characterize these vital components of our constitutional system not only as unresponsive but even unworkable comes off sounding, well, downright un-American, if not treasonous, to many.

Deep Cultural Cleavages

Yet, the time for a frank dialogue about the inadequacies of our federal system is long overdue.  American federalism, despite its many notable successes over the last almost quarter of a millennium, has never managed to compensate fully for the deep cultural cleavages that have challenged this country from the very beginning.

Author and columnist Michael Malice was right and, I would contend, rather courageous, to argue that one part of the country, which could be broadly described as the cultural and political heirs of Puritan New England, have spent almost a quarter of a millennium trying to impose their vision of the American Experiment on the part of the country that traces its cultural and political legacy to Jefferson and that could be broadly characterized as the South.

He even argues that America was never that united a nation in the first place. Even in those rare times when we have enjoyed a measure of ideological unity, we have seldom marched in cultural lockstep.

And why should that come as a surprise?

The Failures of Centralized Federalism

Ponder this fact for a moment: The United States now possesses a population of 300-plus million people spanning a continent-sized country, the fourth largest in the world. Yet, we are governed on the basis of a badly antiquated federal model conceived a century ago by a progressive-minded political scientist named Woodrow Wilson, our 28th president.  He and other academics concluded that the country would be better off divesting states and localities of many of their traditional responsibilities, entrusting these instead to a central government manned by technocrats steeped in the emerging insights of social science.

Even today a few proponents of this centralized model would steadfastly contend that the wisdom of these reforms were affirmed by the degree to which they guided us through two world wars, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement.  In the interest of time and space, I’ll defer that topic for a later date.  Suffice it to say that this model is showing its age in the highly diffused and decentralized economic, political and cultural environment of the 21st century.

America’s Oldest Cultural Impasse

Yet, as Malice stressed in his column, the deepest and most intractable problems associated with American federalism stem from the longstanding regional rivalry and animosity between the political and cultural heirs of New England and the South, two regions with competing visions of the American Experiment.

The fact that New England emerged as the nation’s most culturally preeminent region after the Civil War should surprise no one.  Historical research has revealed that New England was the most literate region on the planet following American independence.  Its emphasis on mass education, particularly higher education, afforded the region immense intellectual and, ultimately, material advantages over the agrarian, slave-holding South and parts of the emerging American Back Country.  And even today, this region and other sections of the country directly shaped by its cultural and political vision continue to project their aspirations onto the rest of the country, particularly the South.

To be sure, the South, despite its statesmen supplying the theoretical foundations for many of the founding principles of this country, not to mention, the fact that seven of the first ten U.S. president were Southern, was encumbered by an slave-holding economic system that impeded economic diversification and, as a result of which, provided Southern political elites with less incentive to educate the region’s farming and laboring classes.

The South’s economic disadvantages proved disastrous over the long run. Following the South’s defeat and economic dispossession after the Civil War, New England and its regional offshoots emerged as the nation’s unrivaled cultural and political hegemons.

If one good thing besides the end of slavery followed this disastrous outcome, it was how defeat provided an impetus for the defeated and economically prostrate South to reinvent itself. One even could argue that the South owed its New England counterparts a debt in terms of its being forced to abandon an economic system that had sapped its intellectual and economic potential for some two centuries.

Lessons from Ireland and India

Yet the story is a bit more complicated.  The case can be made — and has time and again throughout U.S. history by Southern political leaders, academics, and writers — that certain traits bound up with the New England cultural legacy have also worked to exacerbate American unity as much as they have mitigated them.  Virtually from the founding of this country, the cultural heirs of England, many of whom comprise the core of this nation’s current ruling class, have tended to regard the South as the nation’s problem region, fit, in a manner of speaking, only to don the dunce’s cap and to sit on a stool of everlasting repentance.

As they see it, the South comprises the central, defining core of the worst aspects of the American cultural legacy, reflected in gun ownership, religious dogmatism and reactionary conservatism.  And, predictably, this animus has sparked a reciprocal reaction not only in the South but in other so-called red-states, many of which not only share significant cultural affinities with the South but also lay equally strong claims to the Jeffersonian legacy of strictly limited government.

Speaking as an amateur student of history and particularly of 20th century nationalist movements, I’ve always found it remarkable that this cultural animus never sparked enduring nationalist sentiment in the defeated, post-war South comparable to what emerged in Ireland beginning in the late 18th century — or, for that matter, India, in the 19th century.

Whatever the case, I think it behooves Southerners and, for that matter, inhabitants of other red states that share strong ties to the Jeffersonian political tradition to reflect on all of this constructively.

History has demonstrated time and again that conquest and economic dispossession are not one-way streets. Even the inhabitants of conquered lands sometime derive immense cultural, material and even political benefits over the course of time.

Many a contemporary Irish or Indian citizen would concede a considerable debt to the British colonial legacy.  Deep historical scars remain, yes, but despite all of this, they credit their former British hegemons with a few things of estimable value: a national communications and transportation infrastructure as well as a legal and parliamentary tradition, which provided both aspiring nations with critical facets of nation-building. These factors contributed immeasurably not only to a united Ireland and India but to their becoming singularly successful parliamentary democracies.

Southerners likewise owe their New England cousins a measure of debt.  New England’s intellectual and material advantages not only proved instrumental in defeating the South but also were major factors that forced the region over the course of time to undergo much needed economic diversification.  But even before the war, New England’s rich religious legacy also left an indelible mark on the South and much of the Back Country.  Indeed, much of the impetus behind the evangelical religious revivalism in the South and the rest of the American frontier were incubated in New England.

Well-Articulate, Vibrant Regional Identities

No doubt about it: Every region of the country, even the relatively disadvantaged ones, have benefited from American federalism.

Yet, this doesn’t obviate the fact that we now regard ourselves as a deeply sundered and increasingly embittered nation, increasingly divided by religion, culture and politics. Indeed, we have arguably grown even further apart within the last couple of years following Donald Trump’s electoral upset.  And this division is exacerbated by the very nature of Wilsonian model of centralized federalism.  Each side of the great political divide in American, blue and red America, still harbors hopes that they ultimately can harness this centralized federal model to impose their will on the other.

As Malice stresses, this has prompted growing numbers of us to ponder the unthinkable: the merits of breaking up this big, increasingly unwieldy federation into smaller, more manageable, and arguably more humane political entities.

Indeed, if an increasingly restive, assertive California has demonstrated one thing , it is that the South’s preeminent Founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were right all along.  Even at a time when America was overwhelmingly Protestant and culturally British and thoroughly wedded to a single language, these two men categorically rejected centralized federalism on the basis that a country as large and diverse as the United States simply could not be managed centrally.  For his part, Jefferson even occasionally wondered out loud whether liberty ultimately would be best secured across this vast continent through an aggregation of smaller republics, all sharing common cultural and political affinities, all pledged to securing the blessings of prosperity and liberty for their citizens.

In the midst of all these wrenching, seemingly intractable divisions, we are being challenged to return to questions that once preoccupied our Founding Fathers.

We are being called upon to search for ways to detoxify and humanize our federal system. But how?  How do we best govern ourselves in an age of sweeping media demassification?  What political relations are best suited to securing liberty and fraternity among Americans of diverse backgrounds stretched across a vast distance?  Are these relations best secured by some version of Madisonian federalism — a large republic encompassing smaller republics — or are the times calling for a more radicalized, Jeffersonian view?  Has our current political union grown so large, so diverse and so ungovernable that we would be better off living in smaller federations, each of which arguably would be better designed and equipped to serve human needs?

Some readers may regard this last question as needlessly cynical and unpatriotic, if not downright treasonous.  But I would argue that engaging in a frank discussion now about the future of our political association may better ensure that we avoid a disastrous impasse, if not a breakup, further down the road.

Yes, I believe that the cultural and political divisions in this country really are that deep and wrenching.

We must find a way not only to detoxify American federalism but also to humanize it.

 

 

Zero-Sum Federalism

03 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Devolution, Federalism, The Passing Scene, U.S. Politics

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Blue States, Decentrism, Devolution, Federalism, House Republican Tax Bill, Jim Langcuster, Red States, Zero-Sum

state-flagsOur federal bonds are fraying.

We Americans increasingly are conditioned to view federalism and, along with it, national unity, in zero-sum terms. And why shouldn’t we?  The century-old cookie-cutter-style federalism imposed on this country via Wilsonian progressivism has been stretched far beyond the limits of its design function. It’s grown increasingly threadbare.  It’s no longer equipped to accommodate the world’s largest and most diverse economy, much less a culture that is growing increasingly diverse and divided.

The latest evidence attesting to this fact:  The uproar among several blue states – California, New York, Connecticut and Oregon, to name a few – over the House Republican tax cut plan.

The House bill would eliminate the most widely-used deduction – income tax – and would cap property tax deductions, the second most-used, at $10,000.  Here’s the rub:  Many high tax blue states rely heavily on these state and local deductions.  Consequently, many middle-class families in these states will end up paying more under the plan.

This is a lesson in history repeating itself – and possibly with dire consequences.  This growing dissension among states over tax policy bears remarkable parallels to the vexatious debates over tariff policy in the years leading up to the Civil War.  This dissension contributed mightily to the already toxic relations between the manufacturing Northeastern states, which favored high, protective tariffs, and the agrarian, slave-holding, export-oriented Southern states, which insisted on low tariffs levied only to raise essential federal revenue.

And, honestly, why should blue states be expected to foot tax relief for the rest of the country?

Some here in the red hinterland would argue that states that operate expansive and expensive safety nets have backed themselves into tight fiscal corners and no grounds for complaint.  But isn’t this their prerogative as sovereign states within a federal union?

This brings me to a social media exchange I had with some friends this morning regarding the future of the country and strategies for restoring some semblance of a social policy, one that accommodates all regions and classes throughout country.

I related to them that for the past generation or so, I’ve striven to become an amateur scholar of post-war politics and economics of post-war West Germany.   As a Tory conservative, I believe that there is much that Americans in the highly secularized, post-Christian 21st century can learn from this morally ravaged society.

I especially admire the old West German Christian Democratic party, which strove to restore a measure sanity to a morally and ethically gutted out post-Nazi society. Moreover, I admire deeply the social market economy that emerged after the war. As this term, social market, implies, it was an attempt by the Christian Democratic Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his fledgling party not only to stave off socialism but also to build a vibrant post-war free-market economy, albeit one that would provide a reasonably generous safety net and collective bargaining for the working class.

Frankly I would like to replicate some version of the social market to American conditions, but the more I reflect on this, the more it occurs to me that this country is simply to big and diverse – not to mention, badly divided – to implement any such system over a vast scale. What worked – and, to a degree, still works – in a relatively organic society like Germany, simply isn’t tenable in this United States. I could marshal a number of historical arguments for his, but in the interests of brevity, I wont.

Suffice it to say that part of the challenge stems zero-sum views on federalism into which so many of us have fallen.  Blue-state Americans seem to regard any concession to red-state America as tantamount to moral and political betrayal and vice versa.


Under the circumstances, we seem to have drifted far past the point where any kind of humane social order can be established in a nation as large and diverse as the present-day United States.  Indeed, the more I think about all of this, the more inclined I am to adhere to the vision a new constitutional order outlined by the late American diplomat and statesman George F. Kennan.   Maybe the only viable option for American federalism is to heed his call to devolve power to 10 to 12 smaller entities – constituent republics in which 
citizens share strong historical and cultural affinities.

We could still share a common market and a common defense, but responsibilities for implementing social policies such as healthcare, social security, etc., would be left more or less exclusively to these constituent republics.

Yes, this amounts to a systemic, radical change, but is there really any other choice?  Aren’t many states evolving what amounts to different social and economic systems?  California, which possesses the fifth largest economy in the world, has evolved social policies and even a legal system that diverges significantly from much of the rest of the country.

 Under the circumstances, should we really be surprised that an increasing number of states are coming to regard federalism as a zero-sum game?

America’s Coming “Identity Awakening”

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, Federalism, Geo-Politics, Localism, U.S. Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alvin Toffler, Centralized States, Demassification, Devolution, European Union, Identity Awakening, Jim Langcuster, Nationalism, secession

Catalan-demonstration

A Demonstration of Catalan Nationalists.  Photo: Courtesy of Sergil.

Identity Awakening.  I like that term.

It’s a term that geopolitical analysts and commentators have improvised to account for how globalization has produced a sort of paradoxical effect.

“Everywhere we see regionalism, nationalism as well as religious devotion growing in intensity, sometimes morphing into intolerance. It’s the great paradox of globalization: Far from erasing the peoples’ identitarian and cultural claims, it reinforces them,” writes Li Figaro’s Renaud Giraud.

Technology in the form of digitalization has played a role, too. This takes me back to the writings of the recently deceased Alvin Toffler, a futurist who wrote extensively about the the implications of digital technology, especially in terms of how it would transform society, culture, politics and the economy.

Toffler perceived demassification as one very palpable effect of digital technology.  Mass media would no longer be, well, a mass phenomenon.  There would be no more news anchormen of the stature, not to mention, with the temerity, of Walter Cronkite ending newscasts with the hyper-confident pronouncement:  “That’s the way it is…”

As bandwidth expanded, Toffler predicted that media would scale down to accommodate smaller, more defined audiences.

Remarkably, though, this demassification is not only affecting media but also entire nations.

Demassification seems to have played a major role in the “identity awakenings” occurring throughout the world, particularly in Europe.  It even appears that identity awakenings soon will be playing out in America.  Judging from what’s occurring in California, Texas, Vermont,and Cascadia, they already are.

And why shouldn’t they?  If the Toffler’s musings drove home one realization to me, it’s that national identities based on strong, highly centralized governments are a relic associated with 20th century industrialism, just as mass media are – were.

While I am a great sympathizer with and proponent of identity awakenings, I’m no rigid ideologue.  We are urgently in need of decentrism in America, but  we also depend on a common American market and a common defense, much as Europeans require a common continental market and defense apparatus. But to demand that continents as culturally diverse as America and Europe march in cultural and even political lockstep? It’s madness, as more and more people are coming to realize.

Sooner or later, our institutions will reflect that new reality.  Let’s hope that this occurs as a result of peaceful evolution.

The Unpalatable American Truth about Secession

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American History, Uncategorized

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Articles of Confederation, Calexit, Constitutional Ratification, Devolution, Jim Langcuster, secession, U.S. Constitution

washington-first-inauguration

Washington’s First Inauguration in 1789.  He initially presided over 11 states, as North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet acceded to the new Union.

It’s one of the great and, for many left-leaning Americans, unpalatable facts associated with American history.

And this great and unpalatable fact was raised, however unwittingly, by Georgetown University School of Law Professor David Super in a recent discussion of the Convention of States effort.  As Super stresses, the Founders broke the law during the ratification of the U.S. Constitution by abandoning the Articles of Confederation to form a new national compact under a new Constitution. How? By ignoring the provision in the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union that required not only the approval of the Congress of the United States but also the unanimous consent of all of the states before any revision of the Articles could occur.

The Delegates’ Commission under the Articles of Confederation

Bear in mind that delegates commissioned to represent their states at the convention in Philadelphia were “solely and expressly” charged with the task of revising the Articles of Confederation, not with drafting an entirely new framework of government.

Over the course of discussing the intractable limitations associated with the Articles, though, the delegates concluded that simple revision was an impractical goal.  Redressing their acute limitations would require a whole new written charter, one that likely would not be accepted by all the states.

So the delegates resolved to draft an entirely new Constitution, though one that would require the formal assent  of only three-fourths of the states for it to go into effect. Eleven States eventually ratified the new constitution in the intervening twenty months between the convention delegates’ signing of the new charter and the inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States.

The U.S. Constitution: Born of Secession

Think about that: Eleven states, in effect, seceded from the Confederation to form the new American compact we know today as the American Union. Yet, two states, Rhode Island and North Carolina, had not  ratified the Constitution and, consequently, were out of the Union when Washington took the his first presidential oath of office in

North Carolina finally came into the Union in November of 1789.  However, Rhode Island dragged its feet and grudgingly ratified the Constitution after the new federal government threatened to sever commercial relations.  And even then, ratification squeaked by with only two votes.

James Madison’s “Delicate Truth”

The 11 acts of secession that culminated in the new American Union poses what in 21st century parlance would be known as an “inconvenient truth.”

James Madison described it as “the delicate truth” beyond the American Union.

Writing in The Federalist Papers, he described the 11 states’ secession from the Articles of the Confederation to form a new compact as a simple matter of “self-preservation.” He justified this self-preservation on the basis of what he characterized as “the transcendent law of nature; and of nature’s God, which declares that the safety of and happiness of society are the subjects at which political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.”

California Secession: Not Treasonous at All

Simply put, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were no longer capable of securing a lasting,sustainable union and had to be scrapped out of necessity and replaced with something entirely new. And this could be achieved only by a super majority of states seceding from the old constitutional system and creating a newer, more sustainable one.

So, viewed within the wide context of American constitutional history, California’s current secessionist sentiment isn’t treasonous at all but is merely the latest expression of a very well-established American tradition.

Twice Born of Secession

The United States was twice born of secession: first in 1776, when thirteen former colonies issued a joint declaration declaring their intent to withdraw from the British Empire, and later in 1789, when the majority of the states withdrew from the Articles to form a new and improved confederation (Washington’s term for the new union).

And, incidentally, speaking of unpalatable facts, the great nationalist Founding Father Alexander Hamilton repeatedly described the new American  government as a “Confederate Republic” and as a “Confederation” and described the new constitution as a “compact” throughout the Federalist Papers.

But that is another remarkable and rather unpalatable constitutional fact that I’ll save for discussion at a later date.

Richard Florida’s Nine Precepts of Devolution

17 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Devolution, Federalism, Localism, Uncategorized

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Devolution, Donald Trump, Federalism, Jim Langcuster, Localism, Richard Florida

richard-florida

Richard Florida, urban studies expert and best-selling author.  Photo: Courtesy of Jere Keys.

I’ve maintained for some time that American devolution will not be taken seriously until prominent public intellectuals on the left endorse it. One of my decentrist liberal friends in New England,  (@ethnobot), pointed me to a series of tweets by Dr. Richard Florida (@Richard_Florida), an urban studies expert and best-selling author who has written extensively on the nature and promise of the urban creative class.

Florida recently tweeted what could be accurately described as 9 precepts of devolution and localism.

Note that Florida, too, perceives the divisions between red and blue America as being essentially intractable, though he still holds out hope that some form of peaceful coexistence can be maintained. However, he believes that this can be achieved by what he calls “massive devolution,” reflected by a “re-tuned federalism,” though with a heavy bipartisan emphasis on devolving as much power as possible to localities.

Frankly, I couldn’t agree more.

Incidentally, I also wholeheartedly agree with his characterization of the U.S presidency, which I think is long overdue for a complete re-tooling, perhaps along the lines of Ireland’s, Germany’s and Israel’s monarchical presidential models or, at the very least, France’s bifurcated model.

Following are Richard’s 9 devolution precepts:

1. The problem runs way, way way deeper than Trump.

2. The problem is nation-state & imperial presidency that has far, far too much power & is out of sync with clustered knowledge capitalism.

3. The problem is a nation that is terribly divided & cannot be put back together …

4. The problem is a nation that has now been taken over not just by Trump but by the taker class of finance & resources …

5. The only way out I can see lies in massive devolution of power & local empowerment across multiple scales – neighborhood, city, metro…

6. American federalism is a powerful & dynamic instrument that can be re-tuned for our new age of geographic concentration & division.

7. The two America’s can find a way to live together – a mutual coexistence.

8. The only true alternative & opposition to Trumpism I can see is a broad partisan coalition for local empowerment …

9. Compare Jerry Brown’s speech to anything said by national level politicians … Mayors can be even more effective …

John C. Calhoun: Blue State Icon?

18 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

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Blue Stats, Calexit, California Independence, Devolution, Federalism, Jim Langcuster, John C. Calhoun, Red States, secession, Shervin Pishevar

john-calhoun2

John C. Calhoun, architect of Southern exceptionalism.

It’s often said that politics produces strange bedfellows.  And it appears that two weeks after the election of Donald Trump, a growing number of left-leaning blue-staters are embracing, however unwittingly, the political legacy of one of one of red state America’s most incendiary firebrands.

For 180 or so years, elites in the blue states – or what became blue states – have been wagging their fingers at Southerners and other red state Americans, decrying our appalling lack of patriotism and commitment to national unity and, even worse, our recalcitrance in the face of federal power and all that is deemed good, noble and decent in nation and the world. And, rest assured, if, after a year or so following a Hillary victory these fissiparous tendencies had surfaced once again in the South or any of the red states, the outcry would have been unremittingly harsh, with the left screaming about the dangerous rise of secessionist sentiment and the ugly racist, reactionary, conspiratorial and paramilitary-related impulses driving all of it.

Now that the proverbial shoe is on the other foot – now that red state rather than blue state America is in a position to tighten the federal screws – a growing number of Californians and other coastal blue states almost seem disposed toward the ideology of one of the greatest red state recalcitrants of them all: John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina firebrand who helped refine the nullification doctrine and even drew his native state and much of the rest of the South to the precipice of secession in the 1830’s.  And this embrace is occurring with hardly the batting of an eye.

And make no mistake: The people calling for secession or, at the very least, genuine devolution, are not simply ordinary people but also businessmen with real influence. One prominent Silicon Valley investor, Shervin Pishevar, walked back his earlier assertions of California secession, though affirming “a new Federalism where state and local governments are empowered to determine their destinies while bonded together in a United States of America.”

Think about this for a moment. A red state billionaire or political leader wouldn’t have conceived of raising such views following a Hillary victory without the inevitable verbal upbraiding by elites and the mainstream media. Yet, in the weeks following Trump’s unexpected victory, these sentiments are being espoused by the very people who otherwise would have regarded such opinions as dangerous, divisive, if not traitorous, talk only a short time ago.

But there is a silver lining to all of this rising fissiparous blue-state sentiment: It will likely pave the way for some genuine attempts at returning power to states and localities. States were envisioned by the Founding Fathers as entities with the attributes of nationhood but that were compelled, out of necessity, to pool a share of their sovereignty, namely, defense, foreign policy and economic policy,  to a general government – an approach considered far more efficient than each of these states exercising this sovereignty separately.

Honestly, despite all the hypocrisy that newfound blue state affinity for states rights and localism conveys, I wish California lots of luck.  I’ve got no problem with the idea of blue state America preempting Calhoun.  California and the other blue coastal states have every right to reacquire the accoutrements of nationhood that once characterized all of the states of the American Union.

I just hope that these states understand that red states are as much entitled to these attributes of nationhood as they are.

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