Atrios comments on the elite anti-democratic impulse.
Of course, this impulse is troubling, but the argument this LAT contributer shouldn't be ignored. Yes, people disagree about about stuff, and in the United States, these disagreements make us less one big happy family.
Meanwhile, we are seeing an international trend where minority groups within larger nation-states are breaking away and declaring their independance, a process called Balkination.
So, here's my unifying idea: democracy and the principle of popular sovereignty has been the most pervasive idea to come out of the 20th century. However, because reaching consensus across large and diverse populations is difficult, this has created downward pressure on the state--forcing states to base sovereignty on smaller and smaller populations. Could Balkanization, driven by our ideas about self-rule, be the driving force of the 21st century?
Since the end of WWII, the number of independent states acknowledged by the UN has multiplied, much of this fueled by Balkanization. Many nation-states were formed in the post-colonial periods after WWI and WWII and represent a heterogeneous collection of ideologies and ethnicities stitched together based on outside powers' ideas and needs; without the Soviets and the Americans around to pump resources into negative sum civil wars, these countries have been breaking up into smaller pieces along ethnic and sectarian lines. The process is named after all of that unpleasantness in the Balkans in the 1990s, but I would argue it is much more widespread and parallels the political changes are are seeing in Iraq.
Minority political perspectives have rarely risen to this level in the United States (and may be fundamentally different, I concede), but the point that dissent strains fracture points in our society is valid. Sometimes, we disagree about important, nonnegotiable stuff like slavery and abortion. We can all have our private opinions about these things (I'm in the some- opinions- are- better- than- others camp, btw), but when it comes to government, policy will favor one side or the other with real world consequences.
I would tease a bit more out of this idea, particularly as it applies to our own country, where a Balkanization parallel is more forced.
I believe it was Rousseau who pointed out that majority rule political systems only make sense to majority groups; this resonates very strongly with me. In the United States, we disagree strongly about stuff, but the minority typically defers the majority out of, I would argue, naked self interest. Our nation is stronger together than apart, and the truly important stuff is enshrined in the Constitution, where only super-majorities can make changes.
Extremists do exist, like folks who throw bombs at abortion clinics and folks who shack up in compounds with their polygamist patriarchies. And, to legitimately throw in some lefties, though they are less violent and sick, the environmentalists who torch developments and Humvee dealerships also belong in this category. Since the civil war, I don't think one of these belligerent minorities has grown large enough to present a real threat of succession, and whatever the politics, they are essentially criminals under our system.
And one more important point: I'm not sure why politics have become so polarized in this country, except that people disagree about stuff. However, it has become far less civil because of right-wing demagoguery, a process which has been pushing centrists further and further left. As much as the country is polarized, it is between, on one side, a large and broad consensus which likes health care, schools, and less war and on the other a shrinking, squealing minority. This new Democratic coalition that is forming will be very large and diverse, and capture those elusive moderates who aren't "moderates" anymore because they don't like endless war.
(If "moderates" are defined as someone who might vote for a candidate from either party. Why might those be in short supply these days, I wonder.)
Consider that extremist minority in the United States, though, and the attractiveness of succession from their perspective. I'm not talking about the warlike NeoCons or the anarcho-capitalists we refer to as NeoLiberals in polite society; both of these groups don't have an agenda beyond exerting their will on the country as a whole, either by wielding our military power or by enabling the general pillage of our private and public sectors. Unlike these Republicans, the secular minority of weird religious extremists, I expect, would rather be left alone in their own country. (I believe some of them are openly advocating for this, which was the seed behind episodes like Waco and the Oklahoma City Bombing.)
If they were a larger minority, succession might be the only solution to their insistence on a government that permits their lifestyle (if not reinforces it). However, they are into nationalizing parts of women's bodies and kiddie-rape and stuff, which we find abhorrent and unacceptable, and so we will continue to criminalize their behaviors.
So, returning to my theme of Balkanization, I don't expect the United States to split up. And clearly, there are differences between our relationship with our own Dominionists and would-be theocrats than the Iraqis have with each other.
However, it isn't difficult to see how problematic our ideology of popular sovereignty is for the health of large, powerful nation-states. Disagreement is inevitable, breeding a lack of civility (which, so far, is the most the Broders seem be complaining about) to criminalization of politics and even civil war.
Maybe smaller chunks aren't such a bad thing.