'Florida was once seen as a swing state, and yet now, thanks in no small part to DeSantis, it’s strongly Republican.'
“climate change” at all, but he did use the word “free,” or “freedom,” 14 times. For her part, Whitmer used “freedom” mostly to invoke the liberal position on abortion and gay marriage. In Tallahassee, DeSantis emphasized that Florida is the fastest-growing state, and “number one in new business formations.
”Yet still, different as they are, both DeSantis and Whitmer are in charge of their states for the next four years.Indestructible StatesTo them, that was a good idea, because central authority was never to be trusted, and so power should be distributed., “Shew me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty.” That is, wise patriots shouldn’t put trust in the goodness of any government, especially a national government.to safeguard their liberties, creating legal checks and balances against the risk of tyranny—with one kind of check being the states. Precisely because of his fear of a central power, Henry opposed the ratification of the Constitution after it was drafted at the Philadelphia convention in 1787. Mindful of such opposition, proponents of the Constitution were at pains to assure the public that the new document would not put too much muscle in a distant national government.in 1788, “The States will retain, under the proposed Constitution, a very extensive portion of active sovereignty.”that Congress “has only general powers, and the civil and domestic concerns of the people are regulated by the laws of the several states.”Still, to make extra sure that the new United States did not unduly hamper liberty, the American people soon the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads, in its entirety, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”its entirety: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Once again, the default mode is freedom, with the added proviso that the states would be an important legal barricade against national usurpation. The Signing of the Constitution of the United States, with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson at the Constitutional Convention of 1787; oil painting on canvas by Howard Chandler Christy, 1940.Steeped as they were in history, they knew that concentration was always inimical to freedom.to Charles Hammond, declaring of centralized power, “I am opposed.” Jefferson added, “whenever all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” That is to say, the federal government could become as bad as the British government, against which Jefferson and the other patriots had rebelled.In 1869, Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase in a majority opinion, “The Constitution in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states.”the states as much-needed “laboratories of democracy.” Happily, the Constitution, including its federalist, states’ rights component, has been “loose-jointed” enough to allow the states, individually and collectively, to respond to new challenges.Yet the Constitution has gotten “stiffer” in recent decades, as the federal bureaucracy and judiciary has fulfilled Jefferson’s nightmare, expressed in that 1821 letter: “Washington as the center of all power,” becoming “venal and oppressive.” So that’s why we should study our own history: so we can be reminded that the Founders would be horrified at the creep of centralization we’ve seen in recent decades.Laboratories of DiversityWe aren’t just ethnically and culturally diverse, we are alsoIndeed, we are so diverse, in so many ways, that the federal government cannot continue to function as it has for the past century or so.Not for all 335 million of us, scattered across 50 states.In 2020, the voters of the Beaver StateThat seems pretty radical, and yet 58 percent of Oregonians voted for the measure. And if easing up heroin—and meth, cocaine, etc.—still doesn’t seem like such a good idea to you, thank the Constitution, because the law only applies to Oregon., so a bad outcome in one state doesn’t have to spill over to another state. Of course, the people of Oregon don’t seem to think they made a mistake passing their drug bill: progressive Democrats are still in charge there. In 2022—drugs, crime, and Antifa notwithstanding—they retained the governorship, as well as all the other major state offices.Oops, I mean diversity, or democracy.that since the Supreme Court’sSince June, near-total bans on abortion have been implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.abortion—including, quite possibly this year, Michigan.The idea that one central authority can set the standard for the nation is out the window.the unelected majority sought to unilaterallyadjudicateBy now we know that the 50 states are not ever going to agree on abortion, and so the federal government should play a minimal role, not a maximal role.Each state has the Constitution-given power to chart its own course, and as red becomes redder and blue becomes bluer, they are growing more assertive in their charting. Yet there’s an additional dynamic to consider: For all the diversity of the 50 states, there are still only two parties.In other words, all our diversity is being channeled, as it were, into the two-party system.But we can observe that the two-party system has survived for the same reason that the Constitution has survived:The ranks of Republican governors, for instance, includes DeSantis, but also the moderate-to-liberal Phil Scott, justA party includes DeSantis and Scott obviously has no litmus test.Yet of course, no Republican sees Scott as a future national leader. Contrastingly, DeSantis alreadySo what will happen next?Yet beyond whatever happens to those two governors, there’s the larger trend: The United States is still united, and yet it’suniting around a looser vision of state power, much closer to the Founders’ original intent on states’ rights. That’s a vision that allows more room for the states, and their people, to enjoy their own rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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