Lines on a map, lines in the sand

It's bound to be a good week when I can start off reading this in a Wall Street Journal piece:

Devolved America is a vision faithful both to certain postindustrial realities as well as to the pluralistic heart of the American political tradition—a tradition that has been betrayed by the creeping centralization of power in Washington over the decades but may yet reassert itself as an animating spirit for the future. Consider this proposition: America of the 21st century, propelled by currents of modernity that tend to favor the little over the big, may trace a long circle back to the original small-government ideas of the American experiment. The present-day American Goliath may turn out to be a freak of a waning age of politics and economics as conducted on a super-sized scale—too large to make any rational sense in an emerging age of personal empowerment that harks back to the era of the yeoman farmer of America’s early days. The society may find blessed new life, as paradoxical as this may sound, in a return to a smaller form...

The most hopeful prospect for the USA, should the decentralization impulse prove irresistible, is for Americans to draw on their natural inventiveness and democratic tradition by patenting a formula for getting the job done in a gradual and cooperative way. In so doing, geopolitical history, and perhaps even a path for others, might be made, for the problem of bigness vexes political leviathans everywhere. In India, with its 1.2 billion people, there is an active discussion of whether things might work better if the nation-state was chopped up into 10 or so large city-states with broad writs of autonomy from New Delhi. Devolution may likewise be the future for the European continent—think Catalonia—and for the British Isles. Scotland, a leading source of Enlightenment ideas for America’s founding fathers, now has its own flourishing independence movement. Even China, held together by an aging autocracy, may not be able to resist the drift towards the smaller.

So why not America as the global leader of a devolution? America’s return to its origins—to its type—could turn out to be an act of creative political destruction, with “we the people” the better for it.

The centralization of power has reached unsustainable levels, as our 'leaders' isolate themselves within the Beltway, far removed from the everyday reality of their serfs constituents. There is nothing wrong--and a lot to recommend it--with seeking to devolve power back to the lowest possible level. At most, D.C. should be where the States agree to act in areas of common interest: defense (not foreign adventurism), and foreign relations. Most everything else should be left close to home, where it's easier to keep an eye on what's being done in our name.

One would think the crackup of the Soviet Union would have demonstrated the instability of a creaky, monolithic, massive nation state with a centrally planned existence. The question of our time is whether we will be able to amiably devolve power to a loose confederation of friendly communities--on the model of the Czechs and the Slovaks, or the Belgians--or whether the unyielding center will force a tragic confrontation rather than give up its ability to regulate every aspect of life from 'sea to shining sea.'

It is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Interesting times, indeed.