I’ve noticed this and been worried, but there’s one thing about the US which makes me slightly less worried, which is that the US has a natural release valve for a lot of these issues if people are finally forced to pull it, and that’s devolution.
The US used to be more devolved, and that time is still technically within living memory. The federal government grew tremendously in power between 1930 and 1990, which most of the growth happening in the years between 1940 and 1970. This reflected the needs of the country given the times it found itself in: the Great Depression, then WWII, and then the Cold War.
But since roughly 1990 the federal government hasn’t made big power grabs. Mostly this is because it’s already made all the useful grabs to make and has mostly been expanding its power within the domains it already controls, but also because there’s a contingent of folks in the US who continue to support the right of the states to govern themselves without federal interference. Although “states rights” is right coded, it’s in practice employed on the left as well. On the right this is used for things like limiting taxes, restricting abortion, and protecting gun ownership. On the left for raising taxes to support more generous social services, permitting federally-prohibited drugs by hampering enforcement, and restricting access to guns.
If faced with a crises at the federal level, the natural move would be for the US to devolve powers back to the states. Although states are not as robustly independent as they were 100 years ago, because they are so heavily involved in the day-to-day administration of the state they would be able to carry on and rebuild local capacity to make up for lost federal assistance in several years.
Devolution seems likely to me because any would-be dictator or just sufficiently hated president would, given the current political climate of the US, find that ~half the population doesn’t like them and a sufficient majority of ~1/3 of the states would not like them enough to rebel in various ways. I don’t mean a civil war, but more like kicking out federal agents and taking local control of services and institutions. This is likely to work because of an extremely strong norm within the military to not move against its own citizens or getting involved in politics, and the January 6th riot was an excellent demonstration of their continued restraint here.
Thus I expect that if political conflict at the federal level comes to a head, some of the states will just nope out. Not of the US entirely, but of permitting the federal government to exercise all powers that it’s claimed in the last 90 years. And after a lot of noise, they’ll basically be allowed to do it, same way this is being permitted today on a small scale with things like drug decriminalization, gerrymandering, and sanctuary cities.
I don’t expect devolution to be painless, but I do expect it to be functional and for the US to come through surprisingly intact. Internally may look like things are falling apart, but on most measures we will barely notice that anything is happening.
I see the Patriot Act as a grab to expand the reach of existing powers rather than a move into new powers. The powers it granted mostly fit within the existing constitutional framework of what the federal government is allowed to do rather than asserting new powers. I see this as meaningfully different, as the federal government could have enacted something like the Patriot Act at almost any time after WWII but never chose to, likely because it was technologically infeasible to carry out.
It also wasn’t a power grab against the states so much as a power grab against the privacy of individual citizens, and the Supreme Court has made it clear on multiple occasions that there is no general right to privacy, only privacy as a consideration.
Whether it’s a power grab against states depends on whether the surveillance powers would be used in cases where the states try to defy the Federal government.
If a state would try to throw out all Federal agents, the power would likely be used to fight such attempts.
I think you can see this happening more today. States like Florida and Texas are marketing themselves as bastions for those on the right to escape overly invasive federal/state policies, particularly those that appeal to the LGBTQ/gender/racial culture war talking points. On the left, you have states like California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado leading the charge against overly invasive federal/state policies against bodily autonomy WRT drug usage and now abortion.
I’d like to know why you term this “devolution,” as this seems to be the intended modus operandi of the United States. My only hope is that this “devolution” continues further to the point that local, municipal politics becomes most important. I view this as the fastest way out of the political gridlock we face ourselves in. If Americans can view neighbors as neighbors again, working together to make their communities better for one another, rather than enemies trying to overthrow the government or prosecute political opponents, I think tensions will ratchet down dramatically.
I’m not sure how we can take steps to change the culture to view local, municipal politics as most important. I think it’s a very difficult walk. I think community-based news and dialogue is key to start. Local news outlets are disappearing, with corporate consolidation favoring a “cookie-cutter” / “assembly line” approach to journalism favoring national news stories. On top of this, I believe social media timelines (particularly Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook) lead users to engage with national or international news stories as those are most likely to go viral (they’re “bigger” or “more impactful”). This idea that these stories are “more impactful” is a red herring, in my opinion. They really don’t have an impact on one’s day-to-day life quite like the story about what new zoning laws your city council discussed in last Thursday’s meeting.
Why devolution? Because the thing I’m describing is just what the word means: “the transfer or delegation of power to a lower level, especially by central government to local or regional administration.”
It’s always been the case that the US is more devolved than typical countries, but the constitution is quite clear that power is devolved to the states from the federal government, and not that the federal government is granted power at the behest of the states (as was the structure of, say, the articles of confederation).
I agree with you that I think devolution is generally a good thing. Policies don’t work well when they try to address the needs of too many people with too differing of needs and desires. Most of our problems today come, in my estimation, from overreach by the federal government and fights over what that overreach should do. This does mean accepting some undesirable outcomes, like allowing states to enact policies I disagree with, but I see this as the price of peace. Thankfully the US Constitution is designed to enable such a system, and I expect we’ll naturally fall back on it if a strong national government becomes more than people will tolerate.
the constitution is quite clear that power is devolved to the states from the federal government, and not that the federal government is granted power at the behest of the states
The 10th amendment to the US constitution says:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
which sounds like the opposite of what you say. Of course, practice may be different.
My understanding is that since the Civil War the interpretation of the 10th Amendment is that states retain powers not because they are independent states participating with the federal government, but are explicitly subject to federal authority and maintain their powers only insofar as the constitution protects them and the federal government doesn’t move to take them by rule of law. Prior to the end of the Civil War it seems to have generally been held that states were independently associated with the United States and could leave, and we fought a war to assert that they could not. This makes it clear that any powers they have are because the federal government lets them have them rather than the other way around.
Well, given that the text of the US constitution seems to clearly state that all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states (or the people), I don’t see how “power is devolved to the states from the federal government”. It seems that the states don’t need to wait for the federal government to “devolve” power to them in order to do something. As indeed we saw recently with respect to covid policy.
You could argue that the federal government “lets” the states do this, in the sense that the federal government has more guns than the states, and hence could stop them it it wanted to. But this would be naive. These guns are operated by people, whose loyalty to the federal government if there were a conflict would not be automatic.
Your textual interpretation of the constitution may be the right one, but it is not the one that governs as law in the US. Supreme Court has been very clear for the past 100+ years that the 10th amendment means literally nothing.
I’ve noticed this and been worried, but there’s one thing about the US which makes me slightly less worried, which is that the US has a natural release valve for a lot of these issues if people are finally forced to pull it, and that’s devolution.
The US used to be more devolved, and that time is still technically within living memory. The federal government grew tremendously in power between 1930 and 1990, which most of the growth happening in the years between 1940 and 1970. This reflected the needs of the country given the times it found itself in: the Great Depression, then WWII, and then the Cold War.
But since roughly 1990 the federal government hasn’t made big power grabs. Mostly this is because it’s already made all the useful grabs to make and has mostly been expanding its power within the domains it already controls, but also because there’s a contingent of folks in the US who continue to support the right of the states to govern themselves without federal interference. Although “states rights” is right coded, it’s in practice employed on the left as well. On the right this is used for things like limiting taxes, restricting abortion, and protecting gun ownership. On the left for raising taxes to support more generous social services, permitting federally-prohibited drugs by hampering enforcement, and restricting access to guns.
If faced with a crises at the federal level, the natural move would be for the US to devolve powers back to the states. Although states are not as robustly independent as they were 100 years ago, because they are so heavily involved in the day-to-day administration of the state they would be able to carry on and rebuild local capacity to make up for lost federal assistance in several years.
Devolution seems likely to me because any would-be dictator or just sufficiently hated president would, given the current political climate of the US, find that ~half the population doesn’t like them and a sufficient majority of ~1/3 of the states would not like them enough to rebel in various ways. I don’t mean a civil war, but more like kicking out federal agents and taking local control of services and institutions. This is likely to work because of an extremely strong norm within the military to not move against its own citizens or getting involved in politics, and the January 6th riot was an excellent demonstration of their continued restraint here.
Thus I expect that if political conflict at the federal level comes to a head, some of the states will just nope out. Not of the US entirely, but of permitting the federal government to exercise all powers that it’s claimed in the last 90 years. And after a lot of noise, they’ll basically be allowed to do it, same way this is being permitted today on a small scale with things like drug decriminalization, gerrymandering, and sanctuary cities.
I don’t expect devolution to be painless, but I do expect it to be functional and for the US to come through surprisingly intact. Internally may look like things are falling apart, but on most measures we will barely notice that anything is happening.
In what way wasn’t the Patriot Act a huge power grab?
I see the Patriot Act as a grab to expand the reach of existing powers rather than a move into new powers. The powers it granted mostly fit within the existing constitutional framework of what the federal government is allowed to do rather than asserting new powers. I see this as meaningfully different, as the federal government could have enacted something like the Patriot Act at almost any time after WWII but never chose to, likely because it was technologically infeasible to carry out.
It also wasn’t a power grab against the states so much as a power grab against the privacy of individual citizens, and the Supreme Court has made it clear on multiple occasions that there is no general right to privacy, only privacy as a consideration.
Whether it’s a power grab against states depends on whether the surveillance powers would be used in cases where the states try to defy the Federal government.
If a state would try to throw out all Federal agents, the power would likely be used to fight such attempts.
I think you can see this happening more today. States like Florida and Texas are marketing themselves as bastions for those on the right to escape overly invasive federal/state policies, particularly those that appeal to the LGBTQ/gender/racial culture war talking points. On the left, you have states like California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado leading the charge against overly invasive federal/state policies against bodily autonomy WRT drug usage and now abortion.
I’d like to know why you term this “devolution,” as this seems to be the intended modus operandi of the United States. My only hope is that this “devolution” continues further to the point that local, municipal politics becomes most important. I view this as the fastest way out of the political gridlock we face ourselves in. If Americans can view neighbors as neighbors again, working together to make their communities better for one another, rather than enemies trying to overthrow the government or prosecute political opponents, I think tensions will ratchet down dramatically.
I’m not sure how we can take steps to change the culture to view local, municipal politics as most important. I think it’s a very difficult walk. I think community-based news and dialogue is key to start. Local news outlets are disappearing, with corporate consolidation favoring a “cookie-cutter” / “assembly line” approach to journalism favoring national news stories. On top of this, I believe social media timelines (particularly Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook) lead users to engage with national or international news stories as those are most likely to go viral (they’re “bigger” or “more impactful”). This idea that these stories are “more impactful” is a red herring, in my opinion. They really don’t have an impact on one’s day-to-day life quite like the story about what new zoning laws your city council discussed in last Thursday’s meeting.
Why devolution? Because the thing I’m describing is just what the word means: “the transfer or delegation of power to a lower level, especially by central government to local or regional administration.”
It’s always been the case that the US is more devolved than typical countries, but the constitution is quite clear that power is devolved to the states from the federal government, and not that the federal government is granted power at the behest of the states (as was the structure of, say, the articles of confederation).
I agree with you that I think devolution is generally a good thing. Policies don’t work well when they try to address the needs of too many people with too differing of needs and desires. Most of our problems today come, in my estimation, from overreach by the federal government and fights over what that overreach should do. This does mean accepting some undesirable outcomes, like allowing states to enact policies I disagree with, but I see this as the price of peace. Thankfully the US Constitution is designed to enable such a system, and I expect we’ll naturally fall back on it if a strong national government becomes more than people will tolerate.
the constitution is quite clear that power is devolved to the states from the federal government, and not that the federal government is granted power at the behest of the states
The 10th amendment to the US constitution says:
which sounds like the opposite of what you say. Of course, practice may be different.
My understanding is that since the Civil War the interpretation of the 10th Amendment is that states retain powers not because they are independent states participating with the federal government, but are explicitly subject to federal authority and maintain their powers only insofar as the constitution protects them and the federal government doesn’t move to take them by rule of law. Prior to the end of the Civil War it seems to have generally been held that states were independently associated with the United States and could leave, and we fought a war to assert that they could not. This makes it clear that any powers they have are because the federal government lets them have them rather than the other way around.
Well, given that the text of the US constitution seems to clearly state that all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states (or the people), I don’t see how “power is devolved to the states from the federal government”. It seems that the states don’t need to wait for the federal government to “devolve” power to them in order to do something. As indeed we saw recently with respect to covid policy.
You could argue that the federal government “lets” the states do this, in the sense that the federal government has more guns than the states, and hence could stop them it it wanted to. But this would be naive. These guns are operated by people, whose loyalty to the federal government if there were a conflict would not be automatic.
Your textual interpretation of the constitution may be the right one, but it is not the one that governs as law in the US. Supreme Court has been very clear for the past 100+ years that the 10th amendment means literally nothing.