But the idea of audience and constituency is intriguing. It spells doom for Southern nationalists, who think they will be the chief constituents of their elected officials. But their audience will be elsewhere. This is what happened in Ireland and other countries, and what is bound to happen in Eastern Europe. The religious, salt of the earth peasantry is an important constitency, but the audience of the politicians is among national and global elites. So it is here and now, and so it would be after independence. The New South, the country club elites hold the power now, and barring a catastrophe will rule after independence. Only they would be liberated from the Northeast-South polarity, which strengthens conservative ideas, to pursue the liberal capitalism that's been their chief motivation for some time.
But another idea that has made itself known is that such elites will precisely be the the ones to break away, with Seattle, San Francisco, Portland and other metropoli severing their ties with lesser mortals to form an ecotopia. Robert Kaplan's Atlantic articles and books outline such a thesis, though as with everything he writes there's plenty of room for scepticism.
Will city states or smaller regional states be freer than nation states? Perhaps in some ways, but I don't know about across the board. Ecotopia would grant you wide lifestyle privileges but come down hard on smokers and non-recyclers. Confederatopia -- if it does free itself from the country club elites -- might provide great freedom from government social programs, but be quite unpleasant for dissenters to live in.
One thing I do notice is that we are in the middle of a great libertarian tide. People naturally assume that changes will promote further libertarianism. But that's not a certainty. City-states in the 30s or 40s, 60s or 70s would have been far more socialistic. What regional states would do about turbocapitalism or Walmart capitalism is not easy to forsee.
FWIW, If America is being Mexicanized, the South won't escape the phenomenon. The new model of ethnicity, for better or worse, is neither Northern nor Southern but Western, and you'll see it in Arkansas and Georgia, Iowa and Kansas, as well as in big cities.
No, I think not -- they're having too much fun spoiling things for everyone else with their prating and eco-hectoring. I would like to find and read Kaplan's articles in the Atlantic Monthly, though. Because of the gross disorder on my rolltop desk where I keep my laptop, I can't right now put my hand on the file folder I keep my "books wanted" list, to check whether I've added Kaplan's title to it, but could you tell me the title to his book, if you have it? I'm sure I could look it up in a library author file if needed.
Will city states or smaller regional states be freer than nation states?
Not necessarily. I think it was Robert Heinlein, in his fiction, who first suggested that California has a bent for totalitarianism. It's obvious to me: democracy and republic require character in the citizenry. Less character in the people means more dirigisme in the regime.
Confederatopia -- if it does free itself from the country club elites -- might provide great freedom from government social programs, but be quite unpleasant for dissenters to live in.
Texas has a lively tradition of populist dissent, so I've no concerns on that score, and Louisiana has always given great scope to the individualist "character" ..... you must be thinking about Snopesian Mississippi and Arkansas. Which latter, by the way, hasn't received any Mexican immigration worth talking about. That state remains very Jacksonian and Old Democrat in its politics. Corrupt, too, like the Spoils System, the Albany Regency, Tammany Hall, and the other legacies of the National Democracy in the Age of Jackson and Van Buren.
Perhaps it's time for an established historian to start distilling out the essences of Jacksonianism, and filtering out the "contributions" of Martin Van Buren and the Albany Regency, which was anything but democratic and populist.
One thing I do notice is that we are in the middle of a great libertarian tide. People naturally assume that changes will promote further libertarianism. But that's not a certainty.
I think that the "libertarianism" you notice is artificial, and wholly incidental to the real process at work, which is the New Elite's vigorous solution and destruction of the sources and structures of competing authority in morality and political influence, principally Judeo-Christian morality and its exponents, and the various memetic resources of the political opposition.
City-states in the 30s or 40s, 60s or 70s would have been far more socialistic. What regional states would do about turbocapitalism or Walmart capitalism is not easy to forsee.
Excellent point. And for purposes of the forces now at play, even the United States is a "regional state", and meat on the table. The migrations you refer to are the superclass calling its underclass resources to join it in the metropolises, there to offset, undermine, submerge, and destroy the middle class in the processes of reproletarization that the superclass has set in motion, commoditizing added-value skillsets seriatim and en bloc and attacking the earning power of all sectors except management. Only entrepreneurs who succeed, are outside this system of proletarization. Even academics are caught in the maw; they just don't realize it yet, as they are being kept happy for the nonce.
What a joke: just as institutionalized Marxism dies, the real "class struggle" begins, as internationalists work to abolish countries, and reintroduce the world of the 18th century, when the main divisions were those of class and money. And I've just put my finger on the best reason for continued Union: some country has to be big enough to fight the global imperialists, and a disunited United States won't be that country.
FWIW, If America is being Mexicanized, the South won't escape the phenomenon.
Yes, it will. It'll arm, ruck up, and blow the Mexican Aztlanistas into the Pacific. Literally. The South wanted to be transcontinental, too, remember; and the Mexicans have worn out their welcome with their reconquista B.S., so Southerners would deal with them pretty frostily, I think. Texas will be the flashpoint in any fight like that -- or developments in New Mexico, where whites are few and the Chicanos might be emboldened to help them "see the advantages" of leaving the state. That would do it.
But this is all speculation now, which is never as interesting, in the end, as the event. But we will have a fight over the demographic upset before too many more years have passed; and whichever side the United States is on, we may rely on it, that the United Nations will be on the other. That is when even larger issues will be joined -- and the sooner the better, before the Bilderbergers (for lack of a better label) are ready for those issues to be joined.