Sometimes an interested and sympathetic foreigner like deTocqueville sees our country more clearly than we do. British journalist Justin Webb, formerly the BBC’s North America editor, writes at UnHerd about the growth of states rights as a result of the new “originalist” majority on the Supreme Court, courtesy of Donald Trump. Webb believes the state differences may be greater going forward.
It is a good read that makes some interesting points. His contrast of the paths taken by Vermont and New Hampshire is excellent. I’ll give you another example.
My summer home and legal residence in western Wyoming is in a valley down which the border with Idaho runs. In most places the valley is less than 10 miles wide. The terrain, weather, and scenery are identical on both sides. Yet most of the valley’s residents live on the eastern, WY side.
Beautiful, picturesque home sites go begging on the western, ID side. All four of the valley’s tiny towns are in WY. Why is this so? ID has a state income tax, WY does not.
My winter home is in Nevada, which has long been a libertarian outlier among the states with its legal gambling and, except in Clark and Washoe counties, legal prostitution. Plus for decades it had the only quickie divorces. Now it is absorbing a fair amount of the CA diaspora.
It is part of the magic of the American experience. Your citizenship entitles you to make your home in a state with culture, policies and politics of which you approve, presuming you can support yourself there.
Sometimes economics or family make moving to a more simpatico locale impractical. One of our household’s few progressive friends, a teacher and single mother, feels stuck in Texas while her heart pines (pun intended) for leftist Vermont.
The current movement of people to FL, TN and TX suggests the proverbial “Great Sort” continues. I wonder why there isn’t a counter movement of progressives to MA and CA? There seems to be one to CO which irritates my conservative relatives long resident there.
