I agree with Pournelle's personal platform.

That may be surprising, but it shouldn't be. His stand on the modest ambitions of a republic certainly echo my own skepticism of an American empire. America would be changed for the worse by the necessities of empire; we'd give up too many of our own principles to maintain our grip on other nations.

States' rights is also attractive, and that may be more surprising. Conservatives have a vision of newly-empowered states cutting social programs and taxes, and letting big business run rampant, and many would. But others, like California, New York, Massachusetts, for example, would undoubtedly tilt in a more liberal direction. In that kind of country, people would have a choice of the system they lived under.

Diversity, in other words, and as a liberal I think diversity is a good thing. Our present monolithic national system makes control of the Federal government too great a prize, and we just end up getting jerked in first one direction, then the other, as the two main ideologies battle for it. And in a diversified system, we would certainly have more than two ideologies to choose from. Fifty ideologies, perhaps. I like that thought.

Will it ever happen? Mary Anne's analysis is good. I'd add that both the Republicans and Democrats have too great a stake in the system as it is to ever allow it to change. Each has tasted the power of central authority for too long to give it up. Change would have to come from outside their system.