State's Rights

Always sounds good till you think about it for a minute.

The other day, Willard Romney proposed his energy plan for the United States. I was driving through other mountains, these in Pennsylvania, when he did, so I missed the news as it happened. I have been catching up, little by little, but the one part that has stuck with me is Romney's proposal to hand federal lands over the states to do with what they will in their common illusion that everything in this country is limitless. There are practical political reasons not to do this. I know it's an article of faith among conservatives that government is best the "closer" it gets to the people, because it is allegedly more accountable to them. Therefore, state governments are better than the federal government. Following that logic, we inevitably find ourselves in the sovereign-citizens movement, where all power resides in the county sheriff.

Sometimes, I wonder if the people propounding this axiom ever actually lived in any of the states themselves. The abiding characteristics of state governments is that they tend to be more prone to ignorance and much more cheaply bought. (This is why The Blog has a regular weekly feature entitled, "This Week in the Laboratories of Democracy." Because it will never run out of material. It is also why, apropos of nothing, there is a new push to go back to having U.S. senators selected by the state legislatures, where the process can be corrupted more easily and more inexpensively.)

Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.