In an op-ed in today's Seattle Times, a lawyer and constitutional law professor at the University of Washington dismisses the only half-joking talk of blue state secession among liberals since the election, and lays out the case for a new federalism - consolidating blue territories and red territories into 13 "superstates," each with a great deal of political autonomy, and with a federal government primarily tasked with national defense, issues of interstate commerce, etc.
"...it isn't time to give up on the United States of America. Sure, our regions differ culturally and politically from one another. Yes, we're politically polarized. But perhaps we should look at things in a more positive light, put on our thinking caps, and figure out a way to accept our differences and live with them.
One solution -- instead of dissolution -- would be to return to something closer to the Founders' original idea in 1787: 13 self-gov-erning, sovereign states with distinct histories and cultures, joined together for self-defense and economic prosperity.
The people who drafted the United States Constitution envisioned something along the lines of what the European Union is becoming today: independent entities with a joint foreign policy, collective defense, a common market, freedom of movement and basic human-rights guarantees."
"The borders of these regions could be drawn in many ways. To be true to the real cultural differences, many states would properly be split: west-east in the case of Washington and Oregon, north-south in the case of Ohio, following the "blue-red" divide we witnessed in the recent election.
But for the sake of simplicity, imagine the existing states joining as superstates that generally follow that blue-red split. The new 13 regions would be something along the lines of what is shown on the accompanying map."
"Social, health and education programs would be shifted entirely to these superstates, and the federal government would go back to the limited government that James Madison described in Federalist Paper No. 45. We would not dissolve the United States, but we would dissolve the vast national government that grew in response to the economic crisis of the 1930s, the security crisis of the 1940s and '50s, and the moral crisis of the 1960s."
"Our new American superstates should handle the tasks the Founders would never have thought a national government should control: social policy, social welfare, pensions, public health and safety, transportation. The national government would focus on its original job: foreign policy, national defense, interstate commerce and management of federal lands."
"The Bill of Rights would remain in place, and there would be no cutback on the civil-rights gains of the past five decades. As in Europe and Canada, fundamental human rights must be guaranteed through the larger political and economic community. The federal courts would continue to enforce the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment's protections. But, as is the case today with the individual states, our superstates could provide additional rights on top of the national lowest common denominator."
The principal reason that federalism ultimately failed that first time around was not that it granted states and localities political and cultural autonomy, but rather that political autonomy included the right of states to maintain the institution of slavery, and after that segregation.
Slavery is now illegal, and the federal government has gone as far as it will ever go in ending segregation. Blue staters seem far more willing now to accept greater political and cultural self-determination for the country's diverse regions, and as such I think this is a kind of proposal that deserves some consideration.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002089450_spitzer14.html