Life In These “United” States

The Texas State Capitol, in Austin

Texas is threatening to secede from the Union, because that worked so well the first time; and countless progressive Americans are laughing. Interesting how they didn’t laugh so loudly during the Trump Administration, when Left Coast progressives threatened to enact “Cal-exit,” or California seceding from the union. It’s almost like, whatever party controls the White House, states controlled by the other party want to leave the country altogether.

California is considered so staunchly Democratic, and Texas such a Republican bastion, that journalists regularly call both states’ Presidential outcomes before any voting precincts report in. Yet both states consistently split by less than ten points. If Texas seceded to mollify conservatives, millions of progressives would find themselves foreigners in their own nation. The reverse applies in California. Therefore, even if secession were possible, it would be wildly impractical.

I’ve written before that America’s state lines are dangerous and make little sense. Drawn entirely in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, these divisions have become liabilities in the 21^st Century. Growing populations, changing demographics, and advanced technology have packed dense numbers into absurdly small spaces, while massive acreages go unused. It’s become de rigeur to moan that tiny, sparsely populated Wyoming has the same Senate representation as massive California.

Except, I’ve recently realized there’s an additional wrinkle. Wyoming, the least populous state in the 2020 Census, is more populous than the second-most populous state in the 1790 Census, Pennsylvania. Wyoming, sometimes derided as tiny, might’ve seemed crowded and buzzing to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The Founding Fathers, mostly farmers (or more accurately, plantation owners), couldn’t have imagined our dense urbanization.

We call our nation “The United States of America” because the Founders envisioned a loose affiliation of independent political units. Americans often say “states” the way other countries say “provinces,” but in poli-sci parlance, a “state” is a top-level, independent polity with a central government, and the ability to write and enforce laws. In casual conversation, Americans describe such polities as “nations” or “countries,” also words with different formal definitions.

The "Sower" statue atop the Nebraska
capitol building reflects the state's
agricultural heritage

The Founders invested principal power in states, and considered the federal government only latterly, to enforce standardized trade and foreign policy. Even Thomas Jefferson, the third President, esteemed the federal government so lowly that he didn’t include his Presidency on his epitaph, which he wrote himself. This level of local autonomy turned sour, however, resulting in the Civil War. Afterward, the federal government began coordinating law and justice nationwide.

This prompts the question: do states with fixed borders and lawmaking authority even serve any purpose today? Even after the Civil War, states continued serving some legal function, since government acted at the speed of paper. The early telegraph and overland railroad expedited some government functions, sure. But in our digital age, where information blasts across the country and into our homes instantaneously, do we still need states?

Municipal and county governments remain useful. Local law enforcement can identify individual malefactors (pause briefly the question of whether we like the police), and local officials can make on-the-ground decisions about, say, road maintenance and urban development. But states, which merge multiple regions under one umbrella often built 150 years ago, have become battlegrounds for what forms of injustice we’ll willingly accept. That includes staunchly partisan states like mine.

Somebody might respond by stating that state governments coordinate regional and municipal governments. I answer: do they? Nebraska, where I live, is notorious for its chronically neglectful state government. The state capitol, Lincoln, frequently doesn’t care what happens in rural areas, or anything happening more than a two-hour drive away. The state government regularly disregards over half the state, focusing on the prestige-heavy Interstate 80 corridor in the eastern half.

If my state government disbanded tomorrow, it might take months before half a million Nebraskans cared, or even noticed. I’ve heard similar complaints, voiced informally, from residents of upstate New York, inland California, or the Tennessee mountains. States regularly abandon their poorest, least represented residents for the prestigious urban, industrialized regions. This abandonment often goes unreported, since media also ignores poor and rural people, but it definitely happens.

Disestablishing or reinventing state governments won’t magically fix ills, don’t misunderstand me. We’ll face massive conundrums, like how to apportion the Senate (or abandon it), and we’ll probably also have to revamp the Executive Branch. In the near term, abandoning state government will create as many problems as it solves. Yet we must reconsider, sooner rather than later, our 18^th Century government structure in our 21^st Century society.