In the town of Webster, Massachusetts, there is a lake known by the name Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. This is popularly supposed to mean “you fish on your side, we fish on our side, and nobody fishes in the middle”. Although this is likely an urban legend, it offers a possible answer to the deepening red-blue divide in our country.
The values of San Francisco are not those of Kansas. The values of Vermont are not those of West Virginia. There seems to be little holding Americans together but inertia and a shared economic and geopolitical interest.
Congress can’t be fixed. The Supreme Court cannot be fixed. The electoral college can’t be fixed. Political momentum cannot be achieved, nor will impeachment ever be anything but an exercise in political theater, as we saw with the two impeachments of Trump. Federal decrees, whether by the Court or Congress, are going to be unpopular in this or that part of the country because Americans no longer hold any values in common. Imagine the hue and cry that will arise when the Supreme Court decides that an extremist’s right to carry a gun in my neighborhood outweighs our right to safe streets. Where there is no consensus, any solution imposed from Washington will always leave some people unhappy, even deeply so.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that we can no longer live together peacefully under this constitution. We need to talk about coming to a compromise that leaves red and blue America free to order themselves as they wish, without each seeking to impose its values and ways on the other. We fish on our side; you fish on yours. Washington must retain power only in areas where both Americas hold a common interest, such as foreign policy and defense.
This is far from a perfect solution, but what is the alternative? A house divided against itself, in the words of Mark famously quoted by Lincoln, cannot stand. We can only go to war, which would be a catastrophe, or we can go separate ways, which would mean, among other things, the demise of the dollar, the end of the “free world”, and the emergence of China as the world’s sole superpower.
When the Austrian empire in 1867 came to a compromise with its restive Hungarian minority, the country was divided into an Austrian half and a Hungarian half, sharing a common monarch, a common defense establishment, a common foreign policy, and a common economic space. Franz Josef ruled as emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. The two halves of the country had separate governments, separate parliaments, and different official languages. The arrangement was mutually profitable and the country remained one of Europe’s great powers for more than half a century before World War I put an end to it.
We need such a compromise here, now. Let’s start talking.