Iconoclast: Liberals Discover States’ Rights

There’s a states’ rights revolution, notes Charles Lane at The Washington Post. But this time it’s not conservatives leading the charge — it’s liberals looking for relief in the Age of Trump. There’s the “Calexit” independence movement in California. There are also numerous blue-state court challenges to Trump administration policies. This can be healthy, Lane asserts. The federal government must enforce civil rights for all and provide for the national defense. “Beyond that, is it vital that all economic and social policies be identical from Massachusetts to Texas? Or is there some benefit in state-by-state experimentation and even a certain amount of competition?” The United States couldn’t survive half-slave and half-free. But we “certainly could survive if our states’ social models were half-red and half-blue . . . We might even flourish.”