Bait and Switch -- or Divide and Conquer?

I recall, about a decade ago, hearing Rush Limbaugh say of liberal columnist E.J. Dionne something like, "This man couldn't get more things more wrong if he tried." A column I encountered this morning shows exactly what Limbaugh was talking about.

The title indicates to me that Dionne could make a lot more money for himself by entering the bulk email trade, because its title provoked a click out of me, causing me to read something I would have otherwise passed over on the hunch that it wasn't worth my time.

That title? "States' Rights -- for the Right Ideas". I've been pleasantly surprised (in the PS) by Dionne before, and liberals have in the past seen through the paleoconservative smokescreen of states' "rights" as violations of the more fundamental individual variety from which they are derived.

So I started reading, and very disappointingly, Dionne stumbled, to put it very charitably, out of the gate.

Liberals and Democrats in search of new ideas might surprise everyone by embracing the cause of states' rights.

No, that doesn't mean abandoning federal enforcement of civil rights, or environmental or worker safety statutes. That old states' rights idea should stay dead.

Dionne's list of three "good" instances of the federal government limiting the authority of the states is, in fact, one mixed case followed by two bad ones. The phrase "civil rights" is an unfortunate package deal of legitimate individual rights -- which our government is supposed to protect -- with government favors, like hiring quotas, that merely changed the group victimized by discriminatory law and how they were victimized!

And after "civil rights", I have nothing good to say about the gross violations of the rights of ordinary Americans to make a living represented by Dionne's other two examples of what he thinks is a salutary intervention by the Federal government in the affairs of the states.

The rest of the column would seem to be an endorsement of Massachusetts's ill-advised foray into government-run medicine of the fascist variety, which I have already discussed here. But while Dionne does endorse this scheme, what he is really endorsing is the same divide-and-conquer strategy -- disingenuously called "states' rights" only by segregationists and their ilk in the past -- the strategy he initially said "should stay dead".

I have discussed states' rights here several times in the past, and two things I said are particularly relevant to the type of argument Dionne makes here, once we recall that, universal health coverage "means 'socialized medicine', itself a euphemism for: 'enslavement of physicians'."

First, the states do not have rights that supercede those of individual citizens. Their rights -- and they do have them -- are delimited to what they can do to protect individual rights.

The only valid application of the notion of states' rights is to permit states to handle relatively unimportant matters as they see fit. This allows, for example, a thinly-populated state like Nebraska to have a unicameral legislature, or a state originally settled by the French, like Louisiana, to base its legal system on Napoleonic Code rather than English Common Law. In neither case are individual rights being violated.

This point is lost on liberals who, like Dionne, think that the government is there to "solve problems" -- and on social conservatives who think the government is there to enforce Christian morality.

And, when such groups wrap their minds around the idea that a perverted concept of states' rights gives them leverage to thwart the legitimate function of the federal government, they run with it -- as Dionne has. And while he may or may not realize that his new enthusiasm for states' rights will play into the hands of paleoconservatives, it will.

In an earlier post, I speculated on how support for "states' rights" by two other groups -- social conservatives and libertarians -- could play out. It would be similar or worse if the liberals suddenly jumped on to the "states' rights" bandwagon.

The phrase "States Rights" comes to mind. And a big Libertarian fave also comes to mind: legalization of marijuana, which would certainly be easier in some states if this matter were left to them to decide. But what might the religious right get out of it? A chance to ban abortion, as I blogged about long ago. "But doesn't that mean some states would become able to tell a woman what to do with her own body?" you might ask. "And doesn't this contradict the very idea of individual rights, and thus of freedom?" Yousefzadeh will cut you off at this point, yelling, "Extremist."

And would the "marriage" end once states rights had, Christ-like, risen from the dead? I think the Libertarians would be in for a rude awakening (or at least an abrupt interruption in their supply chain of weed) on that score. They'd be in favor of (I can't resist this next word) defending the "marriage". But the Christians would legalize pot anywhere over their cold, dead bodies. But no. The marriage would not end. It would be annulled. It would be like the marriage had never existed! If need be, the Christians would find other allies. Abortion would become illegal. And marijuana would stay that way. And the Libertarians would be impotently wailing about the "extremism" of the Christians who at least got one thing right: Never cede an important principle to someone you disagree with.

In other words, one side in such a fool's bargain will eventually get betrayed, and everyone else will become less free in the meantime.

E.J. Dionne needs to reconsider what he thinks is the purpose of government. More accurately, anyone reading his column should. About the only good thing that remains in today's climate of eroding freedom is that when this foolish scheme ruins the ability of physicians to earn a living in Massachusetts, they can -- as many already have -- move to another state.

But this is only a reprieve. Each state represents a battle in the continuing war for freedom. We can lose battles -- as we have in Massachusetts -- and still win the war. But we cannot win the war if we fail to recognize the strategy of "divide and conquer" for what it is.

I have often commented on how the left and the right have become a lot more obviously similar lately. Add "tactics" to the growing list of similarities.

-- CAV