From my limited knowledge of politics, I get the impression (from various actions that have taken place over the recent past) that Republicans want to State-legislate and only call on the Federal Government when they get into a pickle.
If my thinking is on-target, then it would seem it aligns with something Heather wrote in her most recent “Letters From An American” newsletter (1/7/2022):
From the nation’s early years, lawmakers who wanted to protect their own interests have insisted that true American democracy is local, where voters can make their wishes clearly known. They said that the federal government must not intervene in the choices state voters made about the way their government operated despite the fact that the federal government represents the will of the vast majority of Americans. Federal intervention in state laws, they said, was tyranny.
Following is a portion of one reader’s response to Heather’s remarks (obviously, tongue-in-cheek):
Now that we’ve determined we don’t need Federal government … let’s go a step further. Make each state handle everything on their own. The people they put in office will have no say in anything outside their state. Oh, and wait, that’s too much governing from Albany to say what Buffalo or NYC should do so each place needs isolated government.
We won’t need federal Congress anymore, send them home. We won’t need a President, each Governor will independently lead their 1/50th of the country. All financial resources will come from their own citizens. No more tax money coming from CA or NY where everyone complains about high taxes. We’ll use that money for ourselves.
The only thing we’ll have at a Federal level will be a representative to oversee Federal lands. Just some small agencies.
This all just sounds ridiculous and you all just thought I … must have gone crazy.
But this is exactly what Republicans want to happen. When it does they’ll want to do away with their state government with the exception of banning abortion and voting.
Somehow, I find it difficult to imagine such a scenario would be successful.
But maybe that’s just me.
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Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay
Nan's Notebook 
It would certainly make a great show. Imagine the drama and complexity of such an arrangement? Of course if life has some special meaning it might make a difference or two, but really it might be an interesting change from the worthless gridlock of DC.
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Hello Nan. The way to make this idea understandable is to realize that each politician thinks they should be the single authority. Or the boss of a small group that thinks as they do and can be controlled as they wish. I think about the ego it must take to run for president or governor where you get to enforce your opinion on others. Your word is pretty much the way things are required to go even if you do not have any expertise on the subject or even have staff to explain the issue to you. I think there are some who don’t hide very well that they think they are superior to others and have the “right to rule” over the clearly lessor masses. So yes they would get rid of each governing step until they alone are left to make the calls and say how it will be. But here is the rub, there are a lot of them that think this way and they won’t cooperate with each other. They will do what they can to sabotage and destroy fellow lawmakers to be the last one standing. Think of the old TV ? movie series the Highlander where the motto was there could be only one and each one of the immortals tried to cut the others head off. I wonder if you took every Republican governor and asked them privately who should rule and why, each would say themselves I think? Scottie
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Make each state handle everything on their own.
O-kay… so they want 50 countries.
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I wonder if they would take a vote – whiteys only of course – to reintroduce slavery in Alabama and Mississippi?
I feel a Lynyrd Skynyrd song coming on ….
🙂
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Well, at the very least Jesus would drive every bus.
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”Jesus take the wheel,” Jesus or Jesus the illegal immigrant from south of the border, when he’s not playing soccer for Man City!
🙂
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“I wonder if they would take a vote – whiteys only of course – to reintroduce slavery in Alabama and Mississippi?”
That wouldn’t surprise me at all, Ark. I do know that here in Wisconsin there are some in the legislature who are talking about repealing the child labor laws to “solve the labor shortage”. A full repeal didn’t go anywhere but they’re now talking about cutting restrictions for kids 14 and older on the number of hours they can work and how late they can work at night.
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SMH
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Basically you’re right, John, that’s exactly what they want. Some of them anyway. Each state would more or less become an independent entity and the federal government would be little more than a toothless watchdog that has no real authority to do anything.
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What could possibly go wrong!
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It’s the triumph of the Confederacy.
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It’s been our experience here in Wisconsin that our state politicians want local governments to have sole authority, but only if those local governments do what they want them to do. As soon as the local governments do something they don’t like they bring the hammer down.
A few years ago the city of Milwaukee passed a law that any business with more than 50 or 100 employees had to provide full time employees with three unpaid sick days per year. The state legislature went absolutely nuts and almost immediately passed a law that counties, cities and town couldn’t make employers provide benefits that weren’t enshrined in state law. They’ve done that over and over again here in Wisconsin.
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Nan, it is all about where the GOP can consolidate the most power. Just seeing the recommendations, the sense is the GOP thinks they can hold power at the state level given the changing future demographics. This has been a trend for some time. Keith
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Nan, my apologies from the get go on the shortness of my comment here! 🤭
I’m pretty sure their preconceived scenario would only be unified in concept and theory, and (very?) short-term. There’s an analogy/concept I taught my former girlfriend from Hangzhou, China, about the birth of the USA and how we were able to achieve our independence and freedom from King George III and the British Empire.
For Qin, I gathered up about 16 sticks from the ground then laid them out individually (10-12 inches apart) across the wide & long porch in front of her. Now granted, at the time we were talking about her Chinese government’s decades long ability to keep all Chinese citizens in suitable behavior according to the General Secretary Jinping. This has always been Chinese culture more less dating back to Emperor Qin Shi Huang… keeping the masses or subjects of the Empire UNABLE to organize in any strength or singular vision/direction. With all the sticks spread out separately I picked up one and snapped it in half. Then another, and handed the third stick to her and told her to break it—she did. But next I gathered up the remaining 13-sticks (i.e. the disorganized, fragmented, bickering 13 colonies, bunched them tightly together and asked her to break ’em all in one snap. Of course she couldn’t.
I hope that illustrates how the tried-n-true, applied life concept of “Strength in Numbers in Total Unity” (e.g. E Pluribus Unum) has a huge benefits for a greater number while also managing SO MUCH BETTER threats to the whole or to single individuals within the whole, like a slow moving infection festers and perpetuates. Totally unified under one vision, one mission, one Constitutional Republic stands an enormously better chance of long-term survival than hundreds of individual, rabid, Wild West Gunslingers or Indians!
Guilds, Fellowships, Fraternities, Leagues, Societies, etc, as well as CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference), Faith & Freedom Coalition, The Pennsylvania Society, Western Conservative Summit, the Constitution Party, and a cornucopia of endless “groups” under the umbrella, or union, or nation of Republican-Conservatist (and discriminatory?) ideals… could never survive a long-term period confined to remote, regional entities. That makes them merely a possible flash-in-the-pan, nothing more. They may have their glitz and glory in the very beginning, BUT the absolute hardest job/part is keeping it all together working efficiently for the Greatest Number and Good.
Herd-dynamics in the animal kingdom doesn’t really operate by any other parameters. It DAYUM SURE doesn’t when it comes to egocentric Homo sapiens! 😉
Read between the lines with EVERYTHING you hear, see, and read from (radical) Republican Conservatists. About 80%-90% (on a good day!) is as shallow, misguided, and doomed to fail—for the Greater Good that is—as the rare jewels that infrequently spout-off or legislate. This crying and screaming of government “Tyranny” is merely fatuous smoke-screen as usual. Bottom-line, all humans must be moderated, governed, oversighted, supervised, and ironically done so with the forethought of protection against/for ourselves! 😄 In our world of competitive sports, there is NO WAY IN HELL any league of any team could civilly compete against each other in sportsmanship without referees, umpires, judges, review panels/committees, etc, by whatever title the sport labels them.
Okay, I’m finished Nan. 😉
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You did say your were a teacher at one time, didn’t you … ?? 😉 Hour-long classes?
Actually, I thought it was a very good comment. (Yes, I really wrote that.) I especially liked your mention of the “greater number” being able to face and handle threats to the whole. One wonders if those who prefer such strong individualism ever consider what would happen if a foreign country decided they wanted to take over the “United” States? I suppose UNITY might then become rather important for these “independents,” yes?
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Ahh, yes indeed Nan! Suddenly they would completely do About-faces and whistle new tunes if threats hit the horizon or landed in their own backyards. You know it! After all, they DO LOVE spending billions on weapons, war-technology, and stocking their own arsenals of every imaginable type of arms either on their person or property. 😉
But how well would all these individual, know-it-all Chiefs (no regular Indians), Commanders (with no GI cannon-fodder), or My-Freedom-Or-Death (death for all, not just themselves) Bosses fare organizing coordinated counter-attacks upon self-perceived enemies? Care to guess which “Army” would be victorious… even by a landslide?
Yes, that’s a big fat rhetorical question. 😄
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I wonder, ‘how local is local?’ Here the Governor makes a proclamation that all business must or must not, school boards and parents may not mandate what is best for their children independent of the Gov’s mandate, Neither Travis County nor the City of Austin may make decisions different from Texas State directives. It makes the tyranny of the State more powerful than that of the Fed.
It is all quite confusing and upsetting. I shall now wear my bracelet that says, “No Gods, No Masters.” 🙂
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