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Prologue
I recently had a discussion with a friend about health care reform. I behaved impolitely, but my point stands. It went like this:
Me: Congress is going to blow $2 trillion on this drivel.
Friend: Good. They should spend $3 trillion! The more money we spend, the more people will have health insurance.
Me: Fine. Spend $3 trillion of your own [expletive] money. But when you think you have some moral right to spend my money on yourself, well there’s a special corner in Hell for people like you.
Friend: We have a policy disagreement, and you’re telling me to go to Hell!? Jesus, politics is getting poisonous.
Part 1
Over the last year my favorite columnist, Peggy Noonan, has chronicled the above phenomenon in her Wall Street Journal space. Her latest such piece read like a wise observer’s plea for someone in Washington to “lower the temperature” before it’s too late.
Last summer, when she listed three great threats America is likely to face over the next decade, she was more blunt:
First, economic depression. Second, a WMD attack against an American city. And third, “faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.”
Part 2
A few days ago, another friend marched up to me, beaming, asking if I’d “heard the good news?” He then bragged about some daily tracking poll that, at that moment, indicated Obamacare was more popular after it passed than it was before, and that Congressional Democrats were surging after their victory.
I’m praying that all three of Ms. Noonan’s predictions prove incorrect. But for as long as there are people in America who hope Congress will blow $3 trillion instead of $2 trillion, and for as long as there are people who think it’s “good news” that theft and tyranny are more popular today than they were yesterday, I suspect the “faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements” will smolder and gain strength.
If you meet someone who says this is a good thing, you will know you have met a fool.
Part 3
One of my undergraduate history classes examined pre-Civil War-era America. Once, a classmate asked our professor exactly when the North-South divide began. I’ll never forget his answer. He said: Some settled Jamestown in 1607; then some settled Massachusetts in 1620. They grew apart from there.
In other words, America has been divided from the beginning, in some ways that are minor and some that are irreconcilable.
And, yet, Americans have built the freest, strongest, wealthiest, most generous, most upwardly mobile nation the world has ever seen.
The difference in values between Americans is striking, though it is not surprising. A lot of things are perfectly natural in San Francisco, but make no sense in Kansas. (The Golden Gate Bridge, for example. And Nancy Pelosi.)
This concept isn’t new. The Constitution’s framers were keenly aware that their document wouldn’t become law and couldn’t work unless it guaranteed dramatic autonomy for Americans in different parts of the country. Even in 1787, what worked for Boston wasn’t the same as what worked for Savannah. (Perhaps one is superior, but that point is irrelevant, and the one war that’s been fought to settle the question is one too many.)
Part 4
Americans are proud of their country, and rightfully so. (Texans often don’t see eye to eye with New Yorkers, but the average Texas Ranger and the average New York City firefighter probably share common feelings for al-Qaeda.) But America is a vast country, both in geography and in ideals. And we are an intellectually active country: Most of us have a vision of what works, and a vision of right and wrong, and they generally aren’t arbitrary.
America is too big and too diverse for central planning to work. Just as the colonies couldn’t be run from London, America cannot be run from Washington. That’s why we have dual sovereignty (a novelty among nations) between the federal government and the states. That radical, seemingly impossible notion was probably the greatest gift the Framers left the world. It enables America to flourish.
The Constitution lists a small, distinct, all-inclusive set of powers held by the U.S. government: International and interstate relations, coining money, granting patents, and protecting fundamental rights. And that’s about it. When the Constitution was amended for the first time with the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment insisted that all other powers — those not specifically granted to the federal government — are affairs for the states.
This is not an accident.
Cowboys in Arizona don’t have much in common with attorneys in Boston. The average Floridian who fled Cuba probably doesn’t worship the same god as the average Californian who emigrated from Vietnam. Alaskan crab fishermen surely don’t understand the lifestyle of Pennsylvania mill workers. Yet all are countrymen. And they can get along because each is left to their own devices.
If the Bostonian followed the Arizonan from pasture to pasture, critiquing, we’d have a different story.
America has many beautiful aspects, and one of the most important is this: If a man doesn’t like state income taxes, he can move to Florida. If he’s morally opposed to the death penalty, he can move out of Texas and into Massachusetts. If he seeks a homosexual marriage, he can leave Kansas for Iowa. If that happens, we Kansas will stay out of his business. Even if we want to interfere, we’ll have no legal power to stop him because Iowa gets to make its own rules.
These are facts: In America, many of us think income taxes are repugnant, and many think they are necessary. In America, many of us are morally opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and many are morally opposed to the thought of it being unavailable. In America, many of us think marriage ought to be limited to one man and one woman, and many think a dude should be allowed to marry another dude.
That can work, but only in America.
Part 5
My friend was right about one thing: Politics is getting poisonous.
The anger is bubbling beneath the surface now, at a more dangerous rate than at any time in recent memory. As long as it stays beneath the surface, it’ll be just a passing story reported in contemporary news. But if it boils over, we’ll have ugly chapters to write in our history books.
This is because Kansans who oppose gay marriage do so with moral convictions matched only by those held by Iowans who embrace it.
So long as each state is allowed to decide for itself, neither has much reason to get upset. But in America today, that kind of decision is increasingly made at the national level. Obamacare is the newest example. When Massachusetts enacted its version of an individual mandate, it was within its rights to do so: The people of that state are empowered to oppose it politically, and if they fail (and if they decide it’s a deal-breaker) they’re free to move to New Hampshire.
I think Massachusetts’s program is too expensive, is unworkable, and is less noble than its supporters claim. But I don’t pay taxes in Massachusetts, and I don’t have to live there, so it’s none of my damn business.
Until Obamacare passed. Now it is my business. So are the elementary schools in Minnesota, after No Child Left Behind. Marijuana farms in California, too, because of the national War on Drugs. And the list goes on.
Part 6
America is not homogeneous. It is not uni-religious. It lacks a single, bland view of the world.
America is spicy, and some of the ingredients are incompatible. But so long as state sovereignty is enforced, the explosive combinations don’t mix. Unfortunately, those factions are being forced into each other and stripped of individuality by a federal government with an appetite “to help people” but not enough sense to see that many of us would rather fend for ourselves.
Politics is getting poisonous because ideas that are deeply revered by some of us, and equally repulsive to the rest, are enacted into national law, moments after one side wins an election. Politics is getting poisonous because there is more and more influence available; and most of us either resent the fact that it exists at all, or insist we can use that influence to save the world. Politics is getting poisonous because we are being forced to mind everyone else’s business (and they are being forced to mind ours).
Epilogue
Over the next generation, America might further nationalize. That would pit Americans against one another in ways that will, probably, lead to our destruction. Or, America might relax. It might breathe deeply, and take stock of how it has grown so rich and powerful, so fast, with so much diversity, so peacefully.
Politics is getting poisonous because, as the federal government does more and more, it exercises inappropriate influence at an unprecedented rate. There was a time when politics in Washington didn’t matter as much, when it had only limited influence over us.
That influence doesn’t seem limited anymore. If congressmen vote for a bill today (even if most of us told them not to), they harm us tomorrow, in ways that are clearer and more perceivable than ever before. I hope they learn as much, and soon.
