NYT Soft-Pedals Soft Secession

The New York Times has an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand report about an outrageous new “travel ban” policy being adopted by a growing number of liberal states to bully conservative ones.

In a nutshell, coastal blue states like California and New York have banned state-funded travel to various red states, mostly in the South, in an effort to sanction them for insufficient social liberalism.

For a handful of liberal states, bans on government travel have become political pressure points during the country’s debate about gay and transgender rights. Beyond California, officials from New York to Minnesota to Washington State have pursued the bans in response to laws in states that they contend open the door to discrimination. […]

Even though the economic tolls of restrictions that bar nonessential travel at taxpayer expense are unclear — and may not be fully realized for years — the bans have already helped both Democratic and Republican elected officials grandstand, galvanize supporters and reinforce the regional fault lines of American politics.

The NYT describes this unprecedented culture war escalation as a “new tool for when states squabble.” In fact, it is something much more serious than that: It is a kind of “soft secession” by liberal states from conservative ones—one that could set the stage for a hard secession down the line.

America’s federal structure depends on the ability of different states to pursue different policies within the bounds of the Constitution and federal law. When states do violate protected rights and liberties, we depend on courts, administrative agencies, and their own voters to keep them in line. California, New York, and lesser liberal states are inaugurating something new and dangerous in American politics—official boycotts against states controlled by the opposite political party.

Red states could retaliate by cutting ties even more deeply—by declining to purchase products made in states with travel bans, for example. It’s easy to see how this escalates in a vicious cycle once the principle of state-on-state boycott and coercion is sanctified.

So far, America’s institutions have been able to accommodate deep differences of opinion while keeping the country together as a political unit. The new blue state brinksmanship seems like a deliberate effort to push this system to its limits.

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