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This sounds very states rightsy. But people in Iowa really do care about the cosmopolitan elite in DC and New York. Their entertainment on Fox News (broadcast f
by CalChris 6y ago
This sounds very states rightsy. But people in Iowa really do care about the cosmopolitan elite in DC and New York. Their entertainment on Fox News (broadcast from NYC) and Laura Ingraham (broadcast from DC) is very much about the cosmopolitan elite in DC and New York and very little about their local infrastructure and institutions. Electing Trump was about sticking it to libs and not, decidedly not, about governing.
- rayiner 6y agoOf course it’s states rightsy. The framers came up with a solution for exactly the problem posed in the article. And that was to push governance down mostly to the local and state levels. You overestimate how much Iowans think about politics day to day. But to the extent they care about “owning the libs” it’s because the cosmopolitan elite have spent decades intruding into local governance.
- tptacek 6y agoYou say "the libs", but this principle is instrumentalized by both sides. States rights, for instance, seem not to matter so much when Illinois wants to regulate handguns.
- bhupy 6y ago"States rights" is a phrase that carries a lot of historical baggage, but not only is there nothing inherently wrong with the concept, there's a lot of merit to decentralization/subsidiarity. It's a core principle of the European Union. Switzerland, one of the most prosperous nations on the planet, runs on decentralization, or "states rights".
- rayiner 6y agoFederalism is also huge in Canada (where 80% of government spending goes through the provinces) and Germany (where 50% goes through the states).