Writing in the Washington Post, Colbert King sounds the alarm over “an insurgent poli-tical force” that he calls the “New Confederacy.” According to King, the behavior of this force is “malicious and appalling” as it, in his view, takes up where the Old Confederacy left off in its efforts to “bring down the federal government.”

Of course, King is talking about Republicans who dare disagree with the liberal vision of big government and the centralized direction and control of most of the U.S. economy, including local activities such as healthcare.

But when drawing analogies between today’s big government opponents and others in the past who opposed centralization, liberals like King invariably refer to the Civil War, rather than, for example, the American Revolutionary War. The Civil War is chosen in order to smear Republicans as racists – after all, much better to compare Republicans to those who defended slavery rather than to those who opposed British rule.

This obsession with the Civil War is unfortunate because the answer to the political crisis in this country lies precisely in the approach taken by those who opposed British rule. Not only did America’s colonial leaders defeat the British, but they also created a nifty new government in the midst of significant political divisiveness (i.e., over slavery).

The Founding Fathers based the federal government on the concept of federalism, which limited the role of the central government to one exercising certain “enumerated powers.” But since the 1930s, America has moved further and further away from this structure.

Rather than continue to nationalize all human activity, perhaps it’s time to consider a return to federalism. The concept, however, is unlikely to gain much traction among liberals – big and centralized government is their answer to everything. Opponents of centralized authority are not the New Confederacy, but liberals surely are the New Tories.

P.S.:  Colbert King is an African-American who usually writes about local D.C. politics. But once a year or so, his own chip-on-the-shoulder racism compels him to insult white people who vote for Republicans by  calling them racists, a practice enabled by the editors of the Post. King’s racism is disgraceful, not to mention malicious and appalling, and certainly prevents him from seeing potential solutions to today’s problems.