The news about a second blue-state health alliance is good news for red states, too. How so? Because if blue states can chart their own destiny, then so can red states. And that’s freedom. Specifically, it’s federalism, or states’ rights, as stipulated in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.
The Tenth is not particularly well known, because liberal history and jurisprudence have buried it under an avalanche of pro-central-government-propaganda. For a century-and-a-half, the “leading” thinkers and their schools and publications have told us that the federal government is the proper repository of wisdom and power.
That’s not how James Madison and Thomas Jefferson saw it; they believed the states were prior to the national government. Yet the same progressive historiography that has sought to smush the states also blotted out the beliefs of the Founders that don’t fit The Preferred Narrative.
But by now, the federal government is so unpopular that whoever’s running it, half the country will be angry. And one-size-fits-all dictates on healthcare are a good thing to be mad at.
Back when Joe Biden was president, here at The Daily Caller, this author praised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for carving out a separate path, in defiance of the feds.
Today, of course, the shoe is on the other foot. Trump is president, and so Florida and so Red is mostly happy. So now it’s Blue’s turn to be unhappy. Taking note of a three-state consortium on the Pacific Coast, I wrote on Sept. 4 here at TDC, “The blue states are banding together, in opposition to you-know-who. Indeed, it’s a safe bet that other blue states will join this west coast trio.” A few days later, Hawaii joined in.
Then, on Sept. 18, came the announcement that seven more states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as New York City as its own member — had created a second blue grouping, the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. Its stated mission: “To protect the health, safety and well-being of all residents by providing information based on science, data, and evidence, while working to ensure equitable access to vaccines, medications and services.”
If we decode the document, we see that it’s a jargonized middle finger to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. That’s states’ rights for you; folks can get ornery.
Today, of the 19 states that Kamala Harris carried in last year’s presidential election, 11 have joined up with either the west coast or the east coast counter-coalition. And it’s a safe bet that other blue states, such as Illinois and Minnesota, will find some way to organize themselves.
Will any of these coalitions have power? Can they truly defy Kennedy and the feds on health issues? We’ll have to see, of course, but my bet is “yes,” for the simple reason that HHS doesn’t have troops. Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional delegations for those states will be running cover for their fellow blues.
Just as importantly, smart Republicans will see the opportunity here. They know that the GOP will not always be in charge in Washington, D.C. So they will want to put together a red-state bloc in anticipation of the time that, say, President AOC seeks to socialize medicine, impose mask mandates, and demand transgenderism.
If all that (shudder!) were to happen, we don’t want a civil war. We just want Red to be strong enough — strength in numbers, there are about 25 hardcore red states — to be able to form a protective legal and political bulwark and thereby peacefully rebuff federal intruders.
As they say, good fences make good neighbors. Today, blue states are building a fence. Happily, the same fence that protects them against us can protect us against them.
That’s how the neighborhood stays peaceful. And how the country averts a civil war.
James P. Pinkerton served in the White House domestic policy offices of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He is the author of The Secret of Directional Investing: Making Money Amidst the Red-Blue Rumble.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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