New directions

Citing Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions, it was suggested up here in 2003 that the northern-most New England states need not participate in the invasion of Iraq because it was unconstitutional. George Kennan liked the idea and agreed with it. John Kenneth Galbraith thought our (I helped) idea of sending our own New England representative to the UN “wonderfully to the good.”

And Kennan recognized the need of shifting from global to regional in his last book, “Round the Cragged Hill”:

“I have often diverted myself, and puzzled my friends, by wondering how it would be if our country, while retaining certain of the rudiments of a federal government, were to be decentralized into something like a dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment. I could conceive of something like nine of these republics—let us say, New England; the Middle Atlantic states; the Middle West; the Northwest (from Wisconsin to the Northwest, and down the Pacific coast to central California); the Southwest (including southern California and Hawaii); Texas (by itself); the Old South; Florida (perhaps including Puerto Rico); and Alaska; plus three great self-governing urban regions, those of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles—a total of twelve constituent entities. To these entities I would accord a larger part of the present federal powers than one might suspect—large enough, in fact, to make most people gasp.”

Jefferson’s premise is that the only defense against a bloated or malevolent federal government is the states organically related in their regions. In this model Texans are Texans, Alaskans Alaskan and New England may find its Emersonian soul again before Bloomberg buys it. Hayek works in this model. Health care works. Everything works. Not how it worked in 1930, but how it will work successfully in 2030.