Federalism

Jonah Goldberg just put out an article on the National Review about how the left has returned to liking federalism. Here's some quotes from the article that I particularly liked:

The analogy I always use with college audiences is dorms. Imagine you've got ten dorms on a campus and a student population divided up into the usual coalitions: stoners, partiers, jocks, and so forth on one side, and study geeks, exchange students and — no offense — nerdy Mennonites on the other. A purely democratic system where all students get to decide dorm policy could result in the tyranny of 51 percent of the students over 49 percent of the students. The party-hardy crowd could pass a policy permitting loud music and keg parties at all hours of the night. Or if the more academically rigorous coalition won, they could ban "fun" of any kind, ever. Similarly, if the administration imposed its own policy from above, you could have a system that makes no one happy.

But, if you allowed each individual dorm to vote for its own policies, you could have a system where some dorms operate like scholarly monasteries and other dorms are more fun than a pool party at James Caan's house. Theoretically, 100 percent of the students could live the way they want. Maximized human happiness!

This is just an example of how federalism works, but it's better than the heavy-handed federal government imposing its will on the nation as a whole.

The whole reason that liberals like federalism now is because they don't have the power at the national level to impose their say on the rest of the nation. Goldberg himself says it better:

The problem with the last half-century of public policy is that liberals have abused the moral stature of the civil rights struggle to use the federal government to impose their worldview — not just on racial issues but on any old issue they pleased (emphasis added). But now, all of a sudden, because they can't have their way at the federal level anymore, the incandescently brilliant logic of federalism has become apparent: Liberals in blue states can live like liberals! Wahoo! (Whereas, according to liberals, conservatives could never have been sincere when they talked about states' rights; surely, they meant only to "restore Jim Crow" or some such.)

It would be nice for the Republicans to use their newfound power to cement in place a return to federalism and not to just do what the Democrats, and especially liberals, did and impose rule over the nation as a whole with their myriad of laws and regulations. A good first step would be to nominate judges that are committed to the idea of federalism and not judicial activism that we have seen from the bench over the past 40 years. This would seem to be a slam dunk for Republicans if liberals really want to see a committment to federalism. However, I think that it is further sour grapes by the Democrats, who would like to see their party cling to power any way they can. If they were to retake power in the 2006 off-year elections, then I can assure you that there won't be any further committment to federalism.