As much as I like a strong federal defense of civil rights and federally-coordinated solutions to environmental, health care, and economic challenges…this year has had me majorly rethink a couple of things. 1) The guy who comes after your guy might be a total raving lunatic, and 2) Why should California’s staunch progressivism be stymied by those who would seek to undo it?
Politically, culturally, a hypothetical California addition to Canada would absolutely swamp us. They’d have half the seats in the House of Commons by population. More than half. The next Prime Minister would probably be from California, and the Queen’s next G-G might also, just for political show.
Interestingly, Congress is passing a new bill directing NOAA to improve its weather forecasting by applying techniques developed in climate forecasting.
On the plus side it would finally break the Ontario-trying-to-keep-Quebec-from-leaving lovefest that has been Canadian politics for the last 100 years.
Most of the left-leaning folks, at least here on the bbs, are pretty transparent about the fact that capital-S States’ Rights is an idea to be wary of mostly because of its historical context of removing rights from people and preserving oppressive regimes over protected classes of people. Small-s states’ rights aren’t in themselves a bad thing.
And once again, as with a lot of the “Well, I guess now we’re just like them” moments of bitter self-reflection, there’s a lot of meaningful difference in the details. The latest “States Rights” moves on the right have been to refuse money from the federal government, just so they don’t have to give subsidized health care to poor people, and to restrict the rights of gay people. Compare that to CA continuing critical environmental research, relaxing punitive drug laws and allowing women access to vital medical services.
If democrats have been making hollow arguments about states’ rights, yes I suppose you could make a hypocrisy argument, but if they’ve been criticizing the right for they reasons they’ve used this particularly blunt tool of democracy, then all the self-reflective hand-wringing is unnecessary.