Restless people marching on state capitals demanding a "return to normalcy" may seem idiotic, but so is treating a federal republic of fifty sovereign states like an homogeneous empire.
What do Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Georgia and Delaware have in common?
Very little. And they had even less in common in 1776; which is why from the very beginning of our emergence as a political entity, we eschewed a strong central government as being impractical.
Not only were the thirteen original colonies politically different, they were culturally different, had different laws, different founding principles and-- in a few cases-- spoke different languages.
Long before a little virus came along to distract the United States from its latest tug-of-war over collectivist versus libertarian principles-- the so called "culture war" has been our internal Cold War since the First Continental Congress. Big states, small states; commercial states, agrarian states; port states, upland states; our e pluribus unum has always been more about the "pluribus" than the "unum."
Its for this reason that urban collectivists get so perplexed and vitriolic. Living as they do in an homogenized unum they can never quite understand that the vast pluribus out there have very little in common with them, or for that matter-- each other. This permeates everything from civil rights to healthcare.
Expecting a state like Wyoming to adhere to the same values and fiscal prerogatives as say-- New York, is not just silly-- its downright demeaning to common intelligence. I use New York as an example, because even getting the boroughs and Long Island to see things the same way as Manhattan is a challenge-- and that's even before you sail up the Hudson into still another world apart.
I think when all the dust settles from this epidemic, we will have a resurgence of federalism in the sense that people will be more concerned with what's going on in their own states, counties and cities, then what is happening in the District of Columbia; which is a good thing. Why anyone would think a president and a congress could possibly know what is best for them versus their own legislature and governor, is beyond me. Leave the foreign affairs to Washington; leave where and when I can go shopping to my governor or mayor.
But don't go crying to the federal government when they louse it up. It's not the president's or congress' job to hire good state politicians-- its yours as a voter.
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