Re: CHAT: Gale Norton (was Californian secessionists)

Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:

> Thomas R. Wier scripsit:
>
> > [I]t's partly that many
> > people on the left instinctively and reflexively want to federalize
> > everything, to concentrate more power into the hands of a now
> > massively powerful federal government, and are naive enough to
> > think that that will on the whole lead to fewer abuses of power
> > than if that power were decentralized to the States.
>
> Back in the Middle Ages, people often used to do everything
> they could to get their cases transferred from local courts to
> the king's justice.  If the local lord was good, he could be
> very effective.  If he was was bad, one or both parties was often
> $@(#ed.
I don't doubt it. I'd guess (not being an expert on medieval
history) it had a lot to do with the educational background
of the local magistrates, and the overall lack of bureaucracy.
Contrary to what a lot on the right think about bureaucracy,
bureaucracy to a  certain point actually does increase workplace
efficiency.  In your example, that means society is moving from
a position of virtually no bureaucracy per capita to one of some
bureaucracy per capita, and so perhaps was quite warranted.

> Then there's the Civil Rights movement.  Without the feds, there
> wouldn't be any, period.
Oh, there's no question.  That was one of the great achievements
of the Federal government during the 20th century, probably as
great (if not quite as spectacularly played out) as the abolition
of slavery in the 19th. Another example of positive federal
interference is the slurry of financial regulations during the 30s.
These, however, do not affect my original point: that most of the
people on the left extreme of the political spectrum have a naive
notion about the propriety of the federal government's motives and
actions vis-a-vis the states.  The problem is that the federal
government, like any governmental entity, can put a well-meaning
face on most of the things it does.  Like, several years ago, Congress
tried to federalize punishments in cases of rape on the grounds that
rapes harm the interstate economy to the tune of some hundreds of
millions or billions of dollars a year.  This is no doubt true; but
the Supreme Court struck that law down, I think appropriately, because if
Congress can regulate internal affairs of States on those grounds,
it could in effect turn any issue it so chooses into a matter of "harming
the economy", which makes a mockery of the whole notion of federalism
in the first place. Does the federal government have any bounds to its
lust for power? Probably it's not much different in this question from
the States; but qua federalism it is in a much more privelged position
to take advantage of others.

FWIW, I also believe that there are lots of Republicans/conservatives
who have a naive notion about the ability of the states to take care
of their own affairs.

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"If a man demands justice, not merely as an abstract concept,
but in setting up the life of a society, and if he holds, further,
that within that society (however defined) all men have equal rights,
then the odds are that his views, sooner rather than later, are going
to set something or someone on fire." Peter Green, in _From Alexander
to Actium_, on Spartan king Cleomenes III

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