The Federalist Solution

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The Federalist Solution

 

By Jonah Goldberg (Archive) · Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The bleating about broken government and partisanship continues. "Why can't those boobs in Washington agree on anything?" We're constantly told that the way to fix the country is to dethrone the left and right and empower the middle. Americans Elect, No Labels, the Gangs of Six and Fourteen, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans: Handing things over to these middling mincers and half-a-loafers is supposed to be the answer to all of our problems. It's as if we should just put Nelson Rockefeller's mug on the dollar bill and be done with it.

But what if the real compromise isn't in forcing the left and the right to heel. What if instead the solution is to disempower the national elites who think they've got the answers to everything?

Federalism -- the process whereby you push most political questions to the lowest democratic level possible -- has been ripe on the right for years now. It even had a champion in Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Ron Paul still carries that torch.

The main advantage of federalism is more fundamental than the so-called "laboratories of democracy" idea. Federalism is simply the best political system ever conceived of for maximizing human happiness. A one-size-fits-all policy imposed at the national level has the potential to make very large numbers of citizens unhappy, even if it was arrived at democratically. In a pure democracy, I always say, 51 percent of the people can vote to pee in the cornflakes of 49 percent of the people. I encourge you to read the full article