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Kill The Leviathan...But Not This Way

I love the way this guy thinks...outside the box, and completely unaccepting of the status quo. We need a sea change in this country, and while President Trump is doing the heavy lifting, it is up to us to continue..and expand on his work. Unfortunately his cure is just as bad as the disease!

How to Bridge America's Growing Partisan Divide.

Abortion, minimum wage, the role of the military, how we treat the land we live on -- coastal elites and traditional middle America have retreated to their respective corners and are staring each other down. We not only choose to befriend those who are politically like-minded, but we choose to live near them, too.

But it needn't be this way. Some simple changes in the way America's public and private powers conduct themselves could work wonders in bursting these ideological bubbles and, by extension, restoring some unity to a nation badly in need.

But...he misses a few 800 pound gorillas. The first and most obvious is that the mere size of the Federal government is driving a significant amount of polarization. Of course federal employees are going to be, in the main, more liberal, more enamored of federal bureaucracy and power and reach. After all, it's their paychecks! But moving them to the hinterland is fraught with danger. Just look at his example of NASA and Houston. My guess is that before the Federal government vastly expanded its footprint in Houston that it was just a tad more conservative and rational. Now? It's not as nuts as Austin, but it's in the neighborhood.

Shrink the total number of government employees and we will have a much better shot at a more collegial political process and discourse.

His second idea is also poorly thought out. How exactly do we "make journalists at major outlets live in flyover states half the time[?]" The long march through our institutions is complete, and it is nowhere more successful than in journalism schools. Sending the NYT Washington Bureau head to Idaho Falls for a few months isn't going to convince him of anything other than the humanity of the people of America (hopefully), but he will still be an out-and-proud liberal, and will probably return to DC with amusing stories about the hicks who hunt and fish and...shudder...carry guns!

And his last suggestion is even worse!

Finally, make political diversity an integral part of diversity programs in the private sector and at all levels of government.

Sorry, but diversity programs are part of the problem, and no amount of massaging of their rules and radically expanding them will improve the situation.

I guess I am damning this fellow with faint praise, but I think that his recognition of the issues is a big deal. He just has to take the step toward true conservative philosophy and kill the leviathan instead of expecting a reach-around!