The more I think about the conclusion of that "Eleven Nations" piece (see previous post), the more it bothers me. What makes it so troubling is that it envisions no other outcome to the national conflict than having one side crush the other.

This reveals something about the thinking of contemporary liberals. I doubt you would find many people in Alabama or Texas who are seriously exercised about the abrogation of second amendment rights in Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., and many other areas of the country. People in the savage provinces might think those policies unwise and unjust, and that in the abstract everyone in those cities should have the same right to bear arms that they do. But they don't really care very much. What they will get exercised about is an attack on their own rights, which the gun control movement is, because it seeks to change the understanding of the second amendment, thus affecting everybody.

The same is at least somewhat true with regard to the deeply divisive social issues of abortion and same-sex marriage. Pro-lifers believe that abortion should be illegal or mostly illegal everywhere. But it was the Supreme Court's insistence that it must be allowed everywhere that made the movement the powerful thing it has been, and insured that the nation remains as deeply divided on the question now as it was in 1973. Had the states that wished to outlaw abortion been allowed to do so, the matter would not be nearly as inflamed, and politicians would not have been able to exploit it as they reliably do in every national election. Similarly, people in  Georgia who oppose same-sex marriage might not be pleased that California allows it, but they wouldn't really care that much if they didn't know that the proponents clearly believe that it must and shall exist in the entire country.

In contrast, present-day liberalism feels that a Christian prayer at a high school graduation in a small Mississippi town is a threat to freedom everywhere, and must be stamped out. Liberals, for all their chanting of the word "diversity," really don't want to allow much of it where something important to them is concerned. They see these questions as matters of fundamental right and wrong, and tolerance of the wrong as an unacceptable compromise with evil.

Even if we grant that the noisier element on the right gives the impression that it would like to force its reactionary will on everyone, the fact is that it has no plausible means of doing so, while the imposition by the courts of liberal prescriptions on everyone is a present reality. I've thought for many years that recourse to federalism would be the only way of preventing our deep divisions from paralyzing and perhaps destroying the country. But liberalism really has no use for it, except occasionally as a means to get a foot in the door for some innovation.