This article concerns a recent chart I put together, so let’s start there.
Suppose you were an imaginary State X, which entered the Union as a sovereign political entity, and only joined because of a handful of intended benefits that made it worth trading off a little bit of your independence. You would get the help of the Union in defending yourself from invasion and insurrection. And you’d be guaranteed fair trade with all the other member states. And in most other matters, you’d get to make your own rules as you see fit.
Why would you ever want to invite the Democrat and Republican parties into the business of your own internal state government? These are nationalist parties, and not federalist parties. They’re not concerned with preserving states’ rights, but with transferring the remaining state powers to the national government. So why would you even want them in your state? And why would you even allow them to send money into your state to promote their favorite candidates?
Yet this, you do–even while complaining at the overgrowth of the national government.
See what I mean?
I think it is counterproductive. And it should be counterintuitive—but it’s amazing what doesn’t occur to us when we’re simply not thinking about a thing. Indeed, let me take the high road at this point and admit to you that I have not ever had this thought in my head until this morning—even though I have long been opposed to the Constitution-killing, state-killing platforms of both parties. And I mentioned the question this morning to my wife, Kay, who was the first between us to mention that it was a new thought for her.
Would you allow members in your independent church who wanted the church to join a global denomination that you think is corrupted? Would you invite as a long-term house guest someone who consistently worked against what was best for your household?
No, you say? Then why do you support Democrat or Republican politics in your own state?
Is it not similarly destructive?
Are those parties and their national leaderships really going to reform themselves to reflect your own rare values regarding state sovereignty and a limited central government?
I fear that far too many suffer from something that is metaphorically akin to “battered spouse syndrome”—where they just stay in their parties and take the beatings, being afraid for some reason to leave and get a fresh start. They certainly do it sometimes in their jobs—staying long beyond any reasonable hope that the company and/or management will reform. And they get talked into staying in incorrigible churches under the plea, “Please stay and help us fight for change”—change that sometimes never comes. And they do it in their political parties, too—being loyal and hopeful members, even though the parties at the national level are working against the best interests of their state-level citizen members.
This is not a new story. Charles Schultz presented it to us for decades in a cartoon like this one.
Charlie Brown so cherishes the thought of successfully kicking the football that he cannot decouple from that dream long enough to fully admit how incorrigible Lucy is in pulling the ball away at the last instant—every time.
And I think that many are like this—even in the state governments. They never seem to figure out that the parties to which they attach themselves are going to go nationalistic on an ever-increasing number of questions of state government, where any wise state government would necessarily want to take a federalistic (state-first) philosophy about their governmental business.
The saying, “America First!” has certainly gained some support in recent years. And it may well have its place when it comes to how the US government has often put handouts and allegiances to other nations before our own Union of supposedly-sovereign states. But that slogan should be anathema when it comes to the proper internal management of any of our member states. After all, you’ve got your state business to run; why would you want to expend your state’s assets to help the national government get bigger in order to take away more and more of your state’s own rights?
Even so, is this not what they regularly do? Do they not put the bidding of the central government first again and again when considering their own state business? Do they not take federal dollars for this and that, surrendering their own sovereignty for the lure of “free” money? Do they not put up with increasing federal regulatory encroachments again and again, in return for this money? And do they not even give in to the national government on unfunded mandates—where they don’t even get any money for their trouble?
Yes, it has become a way of life for most state governments to give in to such manipulations as a routine matter of business—as if the states were meant to be nothing more than outposts of the monolithic central government.
But alas! Even among those who understand what I’m saying here, far too many are snookered on account of how their own favorite party is “fighting against” the other party—the one they hate. It’s just too strong an attraction. So what, that their own party is also corrupt, and is also undermining the sovereignty of the states. No, the greater dream here–in their minds–is that of opposing the party they hate—-even if it means compromising what’s supposed to be the main mission on some important points here and there.
And that’s how the game works. It gets you trapped in the party spirit—and especially in that part of the party spirit where you learn to hate the other side. And that’s an important part of the plan, because the whole artifice and scheme is built on the assumption that the typical American citizen is too cognitively underdeveloped to be able to decouple from feelings of hatred in order to behave rationally in politics instead of just going with his or her feelings. And, hatred being one of the stronger emotions, it seems to work wonderfully in a great many people. In millions and millions.
So this is how they get you to buy into the one dangerous party—because it’s opposed to the other dangerous party, which, in your mind, would certainly do harm to your state and to the central government as well. So, in the interests of finding the faults in the one, you blind yourself to the faults of the other.
You’ve been had, State X, and you citizens thereof. You’ve been a very useful pawn in undermining your own state sovereignty—and you think that what you’re doing is to fight the good fight. But you’re wrong about this. You’ve been duped.
Why would you ever want either of these parties doing business in your state? You might as well invite the Russians and the Chinese in to have their way with your internal affairs, too. In fact, in giving such a wide berth to the two major parties, you may well have ushered in the communists as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Indeed, who at local level knows whether the leaders of the national parties have been under the influence of other world powers or not?
What may seem normal to us wasn’t always so. If you had told the original 13 states of this Union that you were going to send in two major corporations to run their internal politics, they’d have been appalled at the idea, and would have left the Union immediately. But fast forward to today, where somebody who’s been thinking hard about politics for 15 or 20 years finally happens to mull things over enough to come up with the title question in this article:
“Why would any state want the two major parties running its politics?”
It’s not too late for us to change our thinking. I, for one, would love to see a new trend in candidates for state offices running as independents—-as state-first loyalists—where they can give their states a much-needed breath of fresh air and a revival in self-determination.
