Great piece. A little OT perhaps, but it made me wonder about the role of Substack and other external-to-mainstream-media/academia outlets. Looking at your footnotes, I wonder for how long scholarly articles critical of the top-down-ness of the federal government will be allowed in the presses and publications of any college or other mainstream institution. Would a university press, in 2023, publish a book asking the questions that your piece does?
Thanks for that historical context of US federalism! I had no idea.
As for the EU, the familiar talk about a "democracy deficit" perhaps campuflages the problem of degrading communities and a profound disconnect between citizens and their *national* manegerial class. More "democracy" would just shift power from those national elites a bit more towards the EU elites--but these are all part of the same club anyway. In practice, what this means is that if a new law under discussion is unpopular in a nation state like Germany, it gets shifted towards the EU, then the national politicians can say they have no choice implementing it. With more democracy on the EU level, this procesure would only seem more legetimate.
In the "anti-federalist" model of community first, this would not happen as much. But then, what community? If something is broken culturally, spiritually, drifting aimlessly and divided, can there be any political solution before that changes?
You raise the interesting chicken-egg question at the end, there. I'm advocating federal populism as the means to create the sheltering space within which communitarian pluralism might flourish. I certainly understand the concern that if communitarian pluralism no longer exists, who will fight for federal populism? As injured as communitarian pluralism has been, though, I see plenty of signs that it's not yet dead. Broken for sure. Eliminated, no. And, if I'm wrong, and it is too broken to fight back, then I guess I'm just wasting my time writing this substack. If I become persuaded of that, I'll stop. But, as I say, I think the old girl has life in her, yet.
I didn't want to sound too pessimistic here, and frankly, we have no idea what the future might bring and how all of this will unfold. What we do know, however, is that we need all the knowledge and insights we can muster, so your work is most definetely not in vain at all.
Great piece. A little OT perhaps, but it made me wonder about the role of Substack and other external-to-mainstream-media/academia outlets. Looking at your footnotes, I wonder for how long scholarly articles critical of the top-down-ness of the federal government will be allowed in the presses and publications of any college or other mainstream institution. Would a university press, in 2023, publish a book asking the questions that your piece does?
Thanks for that historical context of US federalism! I had no idea.
As for the EU, the familiar talk about a "democracy deficit" perhaps campuflages the problem of degrading communities and a profound disconnect between citizens and their *national* manegerial class. More "democracy" would just shift power from those national elites a bit more towards the EU elites--but these are all part of the same club anyway. In practice, what this means is that if a new law under discussion is unpopular in a nation state like Germany, it gets shifted towards the EU, then the national politicians can say they have no choice implementing it. With more democracy on the EU level, this procesure would only seem more legetimate.
In the "anti-federalist" model of community first, this would not happen as much. But then, what community? If something is broken culturally, spiritually, drifting aimlessly and divided, can there be any political solution before that changes?
You raise the interesting chicken-egg question at the end, there. I'm advocating federal populism as the means to create the sheltering space within which communitarian pluralism might flourish. I certainly understand the concern that if communitarian pluralism no longer exists, who will fight for federal populism? As injured as communitarian pluralism has been, though, I see plenty of signs that it's not yet dead. Broken for sure. Eliminated, no. And, if I'm wrong, and it is too broken to fight back, then I guess I'm just wasting my time writing this substack. If I become persuaded of that, I'll stop. But, as I say, I think the old girl has life in her, yet.
I didn't want to sound too pessimistic here, and frankly, we have no idea what the future might bring and how all of this will unfold. What we do know, however, is that we need all the knowledge and insights we can muster, so your work is most definetely not in vain at all.