{"id":13323,"date":"2025-09-20T12:49:26","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T19:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=13323"},"modified":"2025-09-27T15:53:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T22:53:33","slug":"is-federalism-a-way-to-reduce-political-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/09\/20\/is-federalism-a-way-to-reduce-political-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Federalism a Way to Reduce Political Violence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while back, in a Substack<\/em> article, I posed the question: Can Federalism Save Us?<\/a> I suggested that it might. Now I am wondering whether that piece embodies a tension if not a contradiction.\u00a0 But what is federalism? The term does not wear its meaning on its sleeve. As I wrote in that article:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Federalism is (i) a form of political organization in which governmental power is divided among a central government and various constituent governing entities such as states, counties, and cities; (ii) subject to the proviso that both the central and the constituent governments retain their separate identities and assigned duties. A government that is not a federation would allow for the central government to create and reorganize constituent governments at will and meddle in their affairs.\u00a0 Federalism is enshrined in the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now suppose that in some city or jurisdiction ruled by crime-tolerant leftists, rape, carjacking, murder, and so on are out of control. Chicago is a prime example. We right-thinking people despise crime and the policies of those who allow it and in some cases promote it. The agents\u00a0 of the Trump administration, in conjunction with local law enforcement, could easily clean\u00a0 up Chicago in the way they restored order to Washington, D. C.\u00a0 So most of us Trump-supporting conservatives who hate crime and want to see it reduced, support federal intervention, even\u00a0 when the Feds are uninvited and can be accused of meddling in local affairs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The tension, then, is between a commitment to the Constitution with its Tenth Amendment, which implies respect for states rights, and a salutary concern for the welfare of the poor souls who must inhabit a city dominated by benighted leftists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, we’ve been here before<\/a>.\u00a0 I don’t recall anyone in 1962 calling John F. Kennedy a fascist, though. Standards of civility have deteriorated drastically.\u00a0 The times they have a changed<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bob Dylan, Oxford Town<\/a>. Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Born in Chicago<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while back, in a Substack article, I posed the question: Can Federalism Save Us? I suggested that it might. Now I am wondering whether that piece embodies a tension if not a contradiction.\u00a0 But what is federalism? The term does not wear its meaning on its sleeve. As I wrote in that article: Federalism … Continue reading “Is Federalism a Way to Reduce Political Violence?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138,48,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-violence","category-social-and-political-philosophy","category-u-s-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13323"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13329,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13323\/revisions\/13329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}