If We Clear Out Our Ideological Cobwebs, Perhaps Americans Can Have a Long Overdue Discussion

Ideologies are systems of rationalization, abstractions removed from real life.  One could assert that democracy could never work, or that feudalism would always work, that fascism was evil or good.  Libertarianism could be the fuel of anarchy.  Liberalism could be more evil than Socialism.  Communism could be more thoughtful than conservatism.  Ideology, therefore, is prejudice about what can work and what can’t.  It is based upon belief and self-selected bits of experience.

What if we all dropped our ideologies and re-founded the United States of America.  Just take all of our notions about what couldn’t possibly work – what is evil – and put them aside in favor of experimenting – just as the founders of America did?  New ideas can’t really work – until they somehow do.  The notion of a federation of autonomous states had not been considered by the new world colonies.  It had, however, been tried, quite successfully, by American Indians, who formed a federation in the Northeastern States – that was noticed and studied by Benjamin Franklin.  An audacious idea, by looking at the real world around him, Franklin saw that it could work, which gave him the courage to ask others to try it.

Could America work without a Federal Reserve Bank?  Could America work with severe restrictions on the rights of corporations and multinationals?  Could America work with different local cultures, some that allowed guns and others that prohibited them?  Across the world, there are groups of people who specialize in hunting and military defense, and others who specialize in the arts, or diplomacy.  Some groups specialize in spiritual and religious practices.  Some groups are political and others are not.  Yet, they can all get along.  The don’t have to become homogenized.

Could America work if each region had its own characteristics and there were variations allowed so that there was no one national standard for local governance?  Could we have regions that are dominated by religion and others that are dominated by intellectualism?  Of course, there do need to be some basic standards, but I wonder where the line needs to be drawn.  Perhaps we should vote with our feet more often, moving to regions that meet our needs rather than trying to change those that don’t.  Isn’t that how San Francisco and New York became refuges for gay people, why big cities became refuges for minorities, why smaller town have become sanctuaries for guns and fundamentalism?

This whole idea of the melting pot, which was taught and idealized in the 1950’s and 1960’s has by now been definitively disproven.  Humans actually need cultural diversity but it doesn’t need to create inequality and discrimination.  Back in the day, the States were laboratories for political and cultural experimentation.  Yes, States are rather easily corrupted, and often squash diversity in much the same way as the Federal government is accused of.

But there are other ways to arrange and share power in a country.  Regional differences may be more important than States, with regions having autonomy that States currently can not fathom.  Agricultural regions are different from Mega-Cities.  Resort communities are different from University towns.  Experimentation is going on all over.  We just don’t notice it – because we are used to looking through the lens of ideology – seeing things in black and white – rather than in the multiple hues of diverse human culture.

Let’s try to gently move away from ideology – each of us.  Perhaps we cannot envision reorganizing the political structure of our nation, breaking it down regionally into bottom-up congressional districts and regions making up States – rather than having State and Federal governments homogenizing local areas top-down.  But I think that we can refocus our politics on home rule districts eventually, with taxes being collected by these districts, and allocations trickling up to the State and then Federal governments.

Could Liberals sign on to this change in perspective?  Are they truly insisting on having a huge, top-down Federal government running everything?  Perhaps that was the case at one time, but it has encouraged the current culture war that ultimately threatens to destroy this nation.  Could conservatives sign on to this change in perspective?  Are they truly insisting on having a Federal government small enough that it can be drowned in a bath tub?  Perhaps the growth of the Federal government has yielded important benefits we want to keep – and promoting a culture war is akin to the secessionism that nearly destroyed our nation in the 1860’s.

Perhaps we’re all tired of corrupt State governments battling with a corrupt Federal government, while corporations run amok and small businesses suffer.  Can we downsize the Federal government without downsizing corporations so they can no longer dominate both State and Federal governments?  Perhaps it is time for a new American Constitutional Convention – to gather the best of all of our diverse peoples and talk about our problems and how we might be able to address them in a way that builds unity and understanding.  Perhaps this is impossible, but it is long overdue, and we all know that the United States of America was always impossible – until it happened.