We have red states and blue states, with different cultures, voting patterns, and broadly-held philosophies about government. Ideally, we would have let each part of the country live the way they want, as long as its laws didnt violate the Constitution. You want high taxes and generous public benefits? Go ahead and have them; well see if your voters vote with their feet. Let Illinois be Illinois, and let South Carolina be South Carolina. Last fall I took a trip to Seattle, Wash., and the surrounding area. It seemed like every menu, store display, and sign emphasized that the offered products were entirely organic, biodegradable, free range, pesticide-free, fair trade, cruelty-free, and every other environmentally-conscious label you can imagine. (The television show Portlandia did a pretty funny sketch about the ever-increasing, ever-more-specific variety of recycling bins, with separate bins for the coffee cup, the coffee-cup lid, the coffee-cup sleeve, and the coffee-cup stirrer; theres a separate bin if the lid has lipstick on it.) Maybe its just a natural consequence that when you have Mount Rainier and Puget Sound outside your window, you become a crunchy tree-hugging environmentalist. If thats the way they want to live up there, thats fine. The food was mostly excellent. Let the Seattle-ites elect a Socialist to their city council. Let Sea-Tac try a $15/hour minimum wage and see if the airport Starbucks starts charging twenty bucks for a small latte. As long as other parts of the country are allowed to pursue their own paths, thats fine. But a big part of the problem is that we have an administration in Washington that is determined to stomp out the state policies it doesnt like. The president doesnt want there to be any right-to-work states. His Department of Justice is doing everything possible to obstruct Louisianas school-choice laws. Theyre fighting state voter ID laws in court, insisting that it violates the Constitution, even though the Supreme Court ruled, 6 to 3, that requiring the showing of an ID does not represent an undue burden on voters. This you-must-comply attitude can be found in the states as well, of course. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to drive pro-lifers, Second Amendment supporters, and those he labels anti-gay out of his state. Mayors decree that they wont allow Chick-Fil-A in their cities because of the opinions of the owners. In Oregon, state officials decreed that a baker must make a wedding cake for a gay wedding; the state decrees you are not permitted to turn down a work request that you believe violates your conscience or religious beliefs. The country would be torn apart less if we were allowed to address more of our public-policy problems on a local or state basis. But anti-federalism is in the cellular structure of liberalism. All of their solutions are universal, comprehensive, or sweeping. Everything must be changed at once, for everyone, with no exceptions. -- Jim Geraghty
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 13:54:54 +0000
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