Land O' Goshen

So here we are in another election year with the country as riven as always into its Blue/Red dichotomy, with both candidates forced to pitch their "platforms" to some nonexistent middle supposedly representing the political consensus.  Every four years it gets weirder.  The modern process can be dated to Nixon's Southern Strategy, that regressive pandering to the Dixiecrats of the Old South, those former segregationists who used to vote Democratic but found themselves abandoned in their prejudices by the liberal likes of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

We wind up with a system where the compromises become more and more loathsome to both ends of the political spectrum.  We hear more often about how the progressives are "held back" by the theocratically inclined, but I have little doubt that it's just as troubling for the Evangelicals and social conservatives to find themselves immersed in a Godless, secular America over which they feel they have no control.  Despite the largely ineffectual sops thrown by the Republicans to the religious, the country keeps getting more and more socially liberal.  As a trivial example, on an episode of "Two And A Half Men" the other Monday night, a lap dance performed by a former kindergarten teacher figured prominently in the plot line. The dance was pretty explicit, too.  In prime time, on network TV.  Moving the other way, Barack Obama promises to continue the dubious practice, at least under one reading of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, of faith-based initiatives using federal tax money.

Sarah Palin's meteoric rise to celebrity is symptomatic of the fundamental divide in the United States.  She doesn't believe in mankind's contribution to global warming (which, as a corollary, means she doesn't believe that the lowered pH of ocean water, which is a scientific fact, is actually a scientific fact).  She thinks that intelligent design or Creationism should be taught in public schools.  She believes that abortion should be illegal, under all circumstances, as a species of murder.  Sarah Palin attends the Assembly of God and believes in the inerrancy of the Bible.  I think it's fair to say that she is far more popular among the Evangelical base of the Republican Party than the interloper John McCain.  McCain's big problem, indeed, is that he has nothing much going for him other than the Republican brand.  He's an old boring guy with watered-down views and little passion for religious fervor.

When you look at a Red/Blue map of the U.S. , it's pretty obvious where the Republican base is located: the Deep South, other than South Florida which because of its large Jewish population tends to be liberal (as if the Israelites have once again effected a parting of the Red Sea); the Mountain States, with their large Mormon populations (Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, etc.). And the Grain Belt middle of the country, Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas.

I sometimes wonder (to say the least) whether the United States wouldn't do better as some sort of federation rather than this increasingly unsatisfactory arrangement as one nation all subject to the same laws handed down through Constitutional interpretations.  Maybe it would be better, for example, if Kansas could teach Creationism in their schools, and hold prayer sessions in public class rooms, and outlaw all stem cell research.  Maybe Georgia should be allowed to make abortion illegal once and for all.  Maybe same sex marriage should be banned in Utah in exchange for the Mormon promise that they'll leave California alone (as I think they might: the Mormon funding of the Yes On Prop 8 drive no doubt is based on their fear that freedom might spread across the whole country if it takes root in California).

It would not be as difficult to accomplish these things as you might think.  Here's the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: 

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

And what did Thomas Jefferson have to say about that?  "The States should be left to do whatever they can do as well as the federal government."  The mischief really began with the Ninth Amendment's liberal interpretation by a liberal Supreme Court.  And what does the Ninth Amendment say?  

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

That's it.  The entire edifice of "privacy rights," such as the freedom of married couples to do whatever they want in the privacy of their bedrooms (Griswold vs. Connecticut), is built on this amorphous "reservation."  Roe vs. Wade was premised on this amendment.  Was abortion a right retained by the people in 1789?  Who knows?  If Justice Harry Blackmun says so, then I guess it was.  

Now, I concede freely that the abortion debate is really a theological question dressed up as a secular/legal argument.  It is that investiture of a soul at the moment of conception that lies behind the controversy.  Same with stem cell research: George W. Bush bravely stood up for all those frozen cell clumps in embryo banks around the country, all those "snowflakes," because they are souls-in-waiting who must not be murdered.  The homophobia of the religious is based on their concept that homosexuality is a "choice," a decision made with free will to live in sin. The fact that a gay person might otherwise be an exemplar of moral behavior, perhaps in many cases far morally superior to a heterosexual detractor, does not explain away this failing. 

Do I think these ideas are nuts?  Sure, of course I do.  The problem for me is that so much of our national politics and legal process have become hostages to these theological questions.  For a Supreme Court nominee, one question and one question only: would you overturn Roe vs. Wade?  It distorts everything else.  How does a judge stand on issues such as the President's right to declare war without the consent of Congress?  In our country, unfortunately, the theocratically inclined judges who would overturn Roe vs. Wade will probably also believe in an authoritarian political system and the "Unitary Executive," thus abrogating the role of the people in deciding to go to war.

Maybe what will happen over time is that a distinct "Land O' Goshen" will be carved out of the middle of the United States where the Tenth Amendment is restored to its former glory and the states individually are allowed to decide all these questions for themselves.  A theocracy not so different from Iran or the developing Iraq where the entire litany of religious ideas are allowed full sway.  A pregnant teenager in Utah, raped by her father or brother, say, could still get a visa to drive to California to take care of things.  A search for cures for Parkinson's Disease using stem cells could still go on in Massachusetts.  In Kansas, however, everyone could hunker down and learn about the beginning of the Universe six thousand years ago, in a land where everyone is straight, mostly white, and definitely religious.  To say the least, Land O' Goshen would elect its own President, or whatever they would call their leader.  Whatever Sarah Palin wants to be called, I guess.  We'll need one more Constitutional Amendment, of course; eveyone who doesn't want to live in a theocracy will be given three years to get the hell out of the Land O' Goshen.