Federalism is the New Woke

United States Senator Ron Johnson told a Wisconsin audience over the weekend that Republicans need to ditch federal office and take over State and local governments.

Who else has been saying this for years now?

It seems “conservatives” are finally understanding the real game that needs to be played. Forget the center and focus on where the rubber hits the road.

All politics are, in reality, local, but after the ratification of the Constitution, and particularly after Mr. Lincoln’s War, Americans focused almost exclusively on the center in American political life.

This might have been by design–though proponents of the Constitution argued that the States will still be the most important level of government–but the results have been disastrous.

Consider that every mainstream historian treats “State’s Rights” as the alien concept in American political life. In reality, the so-called “nationalists” were always the fly in the ointment.

The Constitution would not have been ratified had the people of the States thought it would consolidate power and centralize every minute political issue in the federal city.

Thinking locally and acting locally is acting like an American.

A recent piece at American Greatness seems to get this. Titled “Federalism is Key to Surviving a Divided Nation,” the author suggests that we need a swift injection of decentralization to save the Union.

I agree. Americans are angry because every issue is “national.” It’s just not true.

Nor have we ever had an “American Nation.”

The Greatness piece is a sloppy mess, and the author weaves nationalist rhetoric with federalism, a real problem, but when a website like American Greatness and a sitting Republican United States Senator seem to be getting the memo that the only path forward is a restoration of the original federal republic, our ideas are winning.

Federalism is the new woke.

I discuss these developments in episode 467 of The Brion McClanahan Show.