Return to States' Rights by the Left?
Dean
For the last few weeks I've been telling several of my friends, quietly, that I was pretty sure the results of this year's elections would result in people on the left, and Democrats in general, beginning to embrace the concept of states' rights.
For long time, most people on the left have held their noses and sniffed at the concept of states' rights because of bad historical associations. But to me the idea is inherently liberal: for deeply contentious issues, why try to force a one-size-fits-all strategy on an entire nation of this size? Despite the claim that states' rights is primarily about racism (which it was at one time for some people--mostly people who are dead now), there are all sorts of reasons to let states and localities make their own choices. Why not let the people in different areas chart their own course on as much as possible, while still staying unified on areas where they have a clear common interest? (And don't kid yourself, you angry blue people in the big cities: where do you think you get all your food, drinking water, power plants, and landfill space from? France? Are you prepared to surrender Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, for that matter?)
Not only is this a more "live and let live" attitude, but it carries a couple of other bonuses: if you really hate the law, it's usually easier to lobby your state legislature to change it than the United States Congress. Or if you're really, truly fed up, you can just move to a state where things are more to your liking.
Interestingly, the New York Times Magazine published a piece suggesting just exactly that this weekend. You can read it here. Some will look at the piece and note that it's kind of snotty and fact-challenged on some points. The guys at Powerline really hated it, for example, but it was hardly the worst example of Blue State elitism I've seen since that Dark Day When Bush Won.
Indeed, if you want to read a practically radioactive piece on the same riff, just read the THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO. That was such an angry, hysterical, over-the-top screed I had to laugh. If the Democratic Party were to take that article seriously, it would practically guarantee itself to become not just a minority party but probably an irrelevant third party within a decade.
Still, in it I see the seeds of the bigger point that's seeping in to more people on the left: If people really have such conflicted views of the proper role of government, and of contentious social issues, why try to force a single uniform standard on them all? Why not allow the states to experiment? Ideas that actually do work will be adopted by other states over time. Ideas that don't work will tend to fade away. And ideas that suit some people just fine, but don't suit others at all, will be found in some states and not others.
This would be a bad thing?
Do you really care if schoolkids in Alabama start their day with a prayer or allow their textbooks to just consider the possibility that there may be some creative force in the universe--as long as your kids aren't forced into it? Do you really think that's going to turn us all into zombified witch-burnin' Xtians? For that matter, do you really think a uniform speed limit nationwide, or that a drinking age of 21 is absolutely required in all 50 states? Or that school choice programs in Ohio are inherently dangerous to schools everywhere in the United States?
Wouldn't a little more "live and let live" philosophy do the nation some good right about now?
About freakin' time if you ask me.
The funny thing being, domestically at least, if and when Roe v. Wade is finally overturned (as it almost certainly will be sooner or later, no matter which party controls the White House or Senate), the GOP will be in big trouble. After all, Christian conservatives will suddenly lose their biggest reason for supporting the GOP.
For how much does your average fundamentalist evangelical really give a damn about the minimum wage, or tarriffs, or gun control, or top marginal income tax rates?
Answer: those are things of this world, and only of mild concern to her. Protecting what she sees as the innocent and helpless, that is paramount to her. And once that is secured, why vote GOP anymore?
Despite what my friend Arnold Harris says, the end of Roe v. Wade will be the end of the Republican Party, not because angry pro-choicers will storm out, but because satisfied pro-lifers will no longer feel the need to vote GOP.
And then the fight will be slugged out at the state level, and guess what? In most states, most people will want the procedure generally available, but will want some limits placed upon it. Which is exactly what the vast majority of women (and men) in the U.S. want.
And the dirty little secret is, that's exactly what the Canadians and most of the Europeans, secularist as they already are, already have.
I wouldn't go predicting as far into the future as you're going.
For all you know Bush will be able to turn the republicans into the party of the ownership society, and the dem/repub lines will be radically redrawn.
The future is a very difficult thing to predict.
;-)
That being said, I doubt that the statists will be really interested in federalism. It just seems like it would engender too much cognitive dissonance.
No. This would be the case only if overturning Roe v Wade meant banning abortion in all states. It doesn't.
If Roe v Wade was overturned, leftists would continue to insist that conservative states have no right to ban abortion, and that leftist states are correct in legalizing abortion.
If leftists decided that consevative states can do what they want, they would be making a radical ideological transformation. You might as well say that leftists would win more elections if they could just be more conservative. Since some of the "states'-rights" proposals are along the lines of "let's stop funding those poor, dumb, ungrateful red-staters", it is really the same thing, as giving tax money to poor people, even if they are stupid and don't even like you, is a central principle in leftism.
In addition, leftist states are not much threatened by conservative states (what's the biggest exception, medical marijuana? puh-lease), but they do feel that history (societies seem to be getting less conservative) and demographics (the rest of the West is pretty leftist) are on their side. So settling for a tie (let every state do what it wants) is like conceding defeat.
While most states no longer have sodomy laws, Texas did. No content to let Texas go its own way, or work to change the law with the legislature, liberals went to the courts. State rights? Down the toilet. That's been the pattern. It's been liberals who have forced court imposed national solutions for every issue, rather than working with state legislators or, as you suggest, just moving. I would love to see us abandon that practice, and perhaps, when the USSC moves to the right by one vote, liberals won't want to take issues there. They will fear a conservative national result. Suddenly...states rights has some appeal.
Overturning Roe v. Wade because it was a crappy decision (it was) is one thing. But what do the liberals realy fear, an anti-Roe decision, a decision ruling that the unborn are people, and that abortion is banned nationwide as a result. Is that likely? Not in the slightest. But the left fears a big nasty taste of their own medicine.
Well, I voted for Bush and I still favor states' rights.
Nevertheless, I do support state's rights in areas like this, even though in my own locality it would result in several decisions I'm not really happy with.
Personally, I've never understood why the concept of federalism is so offensive to people (other than the historic racial connotations). I simply can't be bothered to care whether school prayer is allowed in Kansas somewhere or if the city of San Francisco pays for its employees' sex change operations. Neither have anything to do with me. But there's still a large contingent of people in this country who want to be up in everyone else's business.
I do really care whether American kids anywhere are being taught that Creationism is a science, or that "theory" means "unsupported and speculative explanation". Children being taught in Alabama today will someday be my son's fellow adult citizens, and therefore I'm not indifferent to whether their educations are adequate.
On gun control, how much control do you want to turn over to the states? State and local restrictions are already ignoring the second amendment with feel good legislation.
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria
Show me one issue that the Left would be willing to hand back to the states on a national basis. The Left's main goal is control. Variation or options cannot be tolerated-they would only serve as an escape route. I'd venture if only Alaska could be exempt from Washington's dictates it would soon have the greatest population growth any state has witnessed in the 20th Century.
Know what? As best I can determine, the people who believe God created the Earth 5,000 years ago or that JFK was assassinated by Richard Nixon are, as Douglas Addams would have said, "mostly harmless."
Am I frightened of the idea that my son Jake will encounter "Creation Science" in his 5th-grade textbook? Well to be honest, I'd MUCH, MUCH rather he encounter it, and be intellectually challenged by it, than to live in a world where we treat the concept of evolutionary theory as so sacrosanct that my child should not encounter any challenge to it. What the Hell are we so freaking afraid of? Is evolutionary theory so fragile that we can't let children hear challenges to it 'lest they become mindless Xtians?
Really, honest to fucking God, what are we so damned afaid of? That the kids will get God Cooties?
Wow, my little girl (would that I should have one) may encounter the idea when she is 5 that God created all the beasts of the Earth in their Kinds? What might that do to her fragile little mind? Turn her into a slobbering sycophant to Pat Robertson? Is the whole idea so radical and so distdurbing that we must shelter my poor little girl from hearing it at all?
"AAAAAH! MY FIVE YEAR OLD HEARD ABOUT NOAH'S ARK! AAAAH! SHE'S BEEEN TURNED INTO A SLAVE!!!!"
To be honest I must say: I fear a world where the courts feel so ridiculously fearful of old-fashioned ideas than I do of a world where my daughter might be forced to confront those same ideas.
Even on a civil rights issue, here's where I'm at:
In 1970, almost all 50 states had laws against "sodomy," i.e. homosexual behaior. By 2003, only 14 states were left that had such laws, and of those dozen or so, almost none of them had serious efforts to enforce them. I.E. they were all but DEAD. Just having one state try to enforce them (Texas) drew national attention, and in truth most Texans, even the conservative Christians, thought, "Oh come on, we think that's icky but leave those guys alone, it's none of our business."
In other words, gays had WON. They had TOTALLY WON this debate. They were 95% of the way there, and were damned close to being 100% there. Then the freaking courts had to rub peoples' faces into it.
I live in Michigan. Could I live with it if Michigan outlawed Lesbian porn? Yes. I don't want them to outlaw it but I could live with it. But Jeez, if the Federal courts try to declare such a ban, I can practically guarantee the average Michigander (a generally tolerant person) would get his jaw all worked up.
If you see what I'm saying.
You forgot to mention sticky...