Resurrect the Xth Amendment. Seriously!

"are the two political parties so heavily controlled by interest groups and voting blocs demanding total fealty to their issues that there is little room for candidates who espouse a middle ground, or even an inclusive approach to governance?"

--Carl M. Cannon, “RealClearPolitics”

Pollster Scott Rasmussen warns us of

the real entitlement mentality that threatens to bankrupt the nation: a political class that feels entitled to rule over the rest of us. [This mentality affects] leaders of both parties. . . It’s not just our habits of dependency that need to be broken. The habits of control and penchant for feeding dependency on the part of our political leaders also need to be curbed. . .

While most voters view excessive government spending as the problem, those who feel entitled to rule over the rest of us see the voters as the problem. And that’s the real entitlement crisis facing the nation today. The political class wants to govern like it’s 1775, a time when kings were kings and consent of the governed didn’t matter.

Jonah Goldberg shares Rassmussen’s hostility toward the “leaders of both parties,” and pointedly disagrees with Cannon’s plea for “a middle ground.” The National Review columnist writes:

We’re constantly told that the way to fix the country is to dethrone the Left and the Right and empower the middle. . .But what if the real compromise isn’t in forcing the Left and the Right to heel? What if instead the solution is to disempower the national elites who think they’ve got the answers to everything?

Goldberg’s answer is to endorse federalism, sending power down to the states and the people, as we are supposed to do under the Constitution’s Xth Amendment. Says Goldberg:

Federalism is simply the best political system ever conceived of for maximizing human happiness. A one-size-fits-all policy imposed at the national level has the potential to make very large numbers of citizens unhappy, even if it was arrived at democratically. . . Pushing government decisions down to the lowest democratic level possible — while protecting basic civil rights — guarantees that more people will have a say in how they live their lives. Not only does that mean more people will be happy, but the moral legitimacy of political decisions will be greater.

Such talk is old hat for conservatives. But here’s Goldberg’s new twist. He realizes that whenever conservative and libertarians preach federalism, the other side hears “states’ rights”. So he has simply jumped all over a new essay in the spring issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas by Yale law professor Heather K. Gerken (see picture), entitled “A New Progressive Federalism.” Goldberg:

Gerken’s chief concern is how to empower “minorities and dissenters”[, defined] in almost purely left-wing terms of race and sexual orientation. Still, she makes the very compelling point that the current understanding of diversity — having minority members as tokens of inclusion — pretty much guarantees that racial minorities will always be political minorities as well.

Quoting Gerken directly:

While the diversity paradigm guarantees racial minorities a vote or voice on every decision-making body, it also ensures that they will be the political losers on any issue on which people divide along racial lines. Racial minorities are thus destined to be the junior partner or dissenting gadfly in the democratic process. Allowing local majorities to have their way turns the tables. It allows the usual winners to lose and the usual losers to win. It gives racial minorities the chance to shed the role of influencer or gadfly and stand in the shoes of the majority.

Can both sides come together not on a national “middle ground,” but rather on devolving power to the states and people? Goldberg concludes, “A Left-Right federalist compromise would make America a happier, freer, more prosperous and interesting country[, while dethroning] those in both parties who think they know what’s best.” [emphasis added.]