There are many stripes on the Pride flag, but even as that flag becomes a bit cluttered, it still isn’t as expansive as the American flag, because the national flag’s stars (and stripes) represent the 50 states. This Fourth, more than usually, we celebrate the vast diversity of the Republic. You live your way of life, I’ll live my way. We should all be proud to live in a country that honors freedom so thoroughly.
David French and others have argued that we’re heading toward something like another civil war, because different states have such different theories of what liberty and justice mean. But why have a war at all? If Texans don’t like the abortion policies of Texas, they are free to become Californians or New Yorkers. The same goes in reverse. Calling U-Haul strikes me as a great deal easier than forming a regiment. My sense of Democrats in Texas is, however, that they love their state, abortion restrictions or no. Perhaps we can even learn that if your very neighbors don’t think the same way as you, that’s okay too. The New Yorker gets it!
Thinking of most questions as being definitively answered by nine unelected people in Washington is a bad habit that America is perhaps finally growing out of. I look forward to the day when Americans can, instead of marching pointlessly in the streets every time they don’t like a decision that affects other Americans far away, calmly explain to visitors from other countries that we are a gorgeous mosaic of sovereign states. Each enjoys its own ability to decide on what is best for that state, with the exception of a few constitutional matters, such as freedom of worship, the right to due process, and the right to bear arms, that the Founders declared were non-negotiable bedrock rights of all Americans, no matter what state. We have much in common — the Constitution — but much freedom to take our individual states in different directions. The Supreme Court is enhancing the freedom of states to be different. To paraphrase a saying popular in a city full of Texan Democrats: Keep America weird.