Why We Need a Strong Federal Government Now, More than Ever

The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the folly of abandoning the federal government to Republican destruction.

Two things I read recently have stuck with me. The first was a book titled Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States. In this book, the author Samantha Allen argues, unconvincingly in my view, that queer people are thriving in areas outside of the major urban centers. Despite the fact that there is a strong push from the GOP — and from their constituents — to roll back the gains that have been made in the last few decades, Allen argues that everything is in fact better than we’ve been led to believe by those living in their liberal bubbles.

The other was a short essay by James Fallows in The Atlantic, detailing why it might be a good thing that the federal government seems to be collapsing on itself. Drawing a (rather specious) comparison between the decline of the American federal government and the collapse of the Roman Empire, he suggests that this might be a golden opportunity for local governments to step into the gap.

Both of these pieces betray a certain naïveté. For Fallows, this belief makes sense, since his recent writing career has focused on the ways in which the heartland of America remains…