< PREVIOUS ] [ 1995 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Whenever there's a blizzard in Washington, D.C., the
authorities tell non-essential
federal employees to
stay home, lest they clog the roads.
Similarly, when legislative and executive branches were
unable to reach a timely agreement last week to maintain
the federal government's authority to spend money,
non-essential
employees were laid off.
This suggests that the oft-discussed downsizing of the federal government, usually presented as a formidable chore requiring years of study followed by task-force meetings and extended hearings, is actually quite simple.
They already know who's essential and who isn't. At the moment, only the essentials are drawing pay. The federal government has been successfully downsized without studies or hearings -- it happened overnight.
Further, both parties -- executive Democrats and legislative Republicans -- can take credit for this signal accomplishment.
With that settled, we can ponder a larger federal question. The United States is a polyglot nation of continental dimensions, and these are hard days for other such nations.
The biggest of them in recent times was the Soviet Union. It disintegrated, and its biggest remnant, Russia, has its hands full with separatist and secession movements.
Canada just barely stayed together in a recent election, and the Quebec independence issue won't go away. India suffers from frequent internal unrest -- Sikh uprisings, angry minority Muslims, etc. China stays together by operating a brutal police state, and even that doesn't stop the Tibetans from rebelling.
Why is all this happening? What does it bode for this country? Are we somehow immune to these problems?
My guess, based on history and on reading some of the
futuristic Third Wave
analysis that Newt Gingrich
recommends, is this: When it comes to nations, bigger was
better until quite recently. Now it doesn't matter.
The United States was essentially a loose collection of
sectional interests until the Civil War, which resulted in
a unified nation. As Garry Wills has pointed out in his
analysis of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, people
used to say the United States are,
but after
Lincoln, they said the United States is.
In some ways, then, the modern union is Lincoln's work. He saw something beyond section rivalries -- the potential of a vast internal market with producers and consumers linked by telegraph and railroads.
This huge market could create unparalleled prosperity, and Lincoln said as much in his second annual address to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862.
That portion of the earth's surface which is owned
and inhabited by the people of the United States is well
adapted to be the home of one national family, and it is
not well adapted for two or more. Its vast extent and its
variety of climate and productions are of advantage in this
age for one people, whatever they might have been in former
ages. Steam, telegraphs, and intelligence have brought
these to be an advantageous combination for one united
people.
Consider this arrangement from the vantage of the advanced industry of that century, a steel-maker. Steel-making requires bulk commodities best suited for rail or water transport -- the bigger the region you can draw materials from, the better. It requires immense capital, which means you need a big market -- and a continental country without internal barriers provides that big market.
Extend that analysis, and you can see why bigger was better until quite recently.
But in this emerging information economy
there
are different rules. The advanced industries where the most
value is added do not need a transportation network to
supply heavy bulk commodities. With more and more free
trade, they have access to any market they chose to enter;
national boundaries aren't important. Communication has
improved so that you can be in instant contact with anyone
anywhere.
The result of these transformations, as a geographer
once explained to me, is that any place with a satellite
dish for communication and an air strip for jet transport
is, in economic terms, the equivalent of any other place.
You don't need all that infrastructure that only big
countries used to be able to provide.
One example was Singapore, a city-state, not a nation-state. (We'll ignore its autocratic regime for the moment, since we're talking about prosperity, not liberty.) Another is Hong Kong, at least until the Chinese take over.
Historically, the nation-state is a relatively recent invention, dating from perhaps the 15th century when France was unified. Antiquity offers city-states and empires, which were generally extensions of cities like Rome or Babylon.
Perhaps, then, the polyglot continental nation is something that worked for a while, but its time is over because people no longer need what it has to offer.
If that's the case, then the shutdowns
of our
federal government will become more frequent in the future,
and at some point, nobody will bother to get it running
again.
====END COLUMN TEXT ====
NOTE TO COPY EDITOR: Garry Wills is how he spells his name.
=== END OF NOTE
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1995 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >