By Josh Levin Posted Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2009
In the American end times, our government will take one of two forms. One possibility is that federalism will give way to an all-powerful central government. (In yesterday's global-warming thought experiment, this was the climate strongman scenario.) The other option is decentralization—in the absence of a unifying national interest, the United States of America will fragment and be supplanted by regional governance.
America was designed to avoid these two extremes—to keep the states and the national government in balance. The United States will end when the equilibrium mandated by the Constitution no longer holds. Tomorrow, I'll look at how the country might transition from democracy to totalitarianism. Today, I'll focus on America's disintegration.
Predictions of modern America's collapse usually say more about the speaker than about the country's condition. Igor Panarin, the Russian political scientist who believes the United States will break into six pieces in 2010, seems to be extrapolating from what happened to the Soviet Union. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who paid lip service to secession at a tax-day rally earlier this year, was less predicting America's downfall than feeding chum to a riled-up, "Secede!"-chanting crowd. "[I]f Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people," Perry said, "you know, who knows what might come out of that."
Eric Zuelow, a history professor at the University of New England and the editor of The Nationalism Project, argues that "loud voices" like Perry's bolster the country's strength. The fact that we can debate our country's legitimacy is a sign of national health. For the United States to fall to pieces, Zuelow says, it'll take more than a demagogue on a PA. Americans will have to come to believe they're no longer Americans.
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