Nothing you will read in the following words, sentences, and paragraphs will be revolutionary. Nothing will be groundbreaking, trailblazing, or even yet to be heard. The content of this polemic will be merely the latest in a vast corpus of critiques of the federal government’s treatment of the city and citizens of Washington, DC. But as I am writing for The DC Voice, where it is held that one must write the narrative in order to change the narrative, I have decided to make my own contribution to the narrative in question.
Let us begin very simply. Imagine a country, a kingdom, an empire, a confederacy—any collection of land, history, culture, and the people populating all three. So long as you didn’t imagine an anarchist state, you have naturally envisioned two core components of this fantasyland: the government and the governed.
Think more about this land, this history, this culture, and these people. With enough time, it’s likely that all of the above will be attached in some way to a set of values or beliefs. This is the case of every country on the planet. Everything from a nation’s constitution and creed to its flag is created with a certain ideology in mind. There is always a unifying principle at the heart of the kingdom. There is always a goal being strived for.
In the case of our kingdom, the United States, what is this principle? What is this goal? This is easily answerable for most every American regardless of whether they know the Pledge of Allegiance or Constitution by heart. You needn’t know much to know that America’s founding mission was to protect and uphold liberty, justice, and individualism. The right to decide one’s own destiny instead of, say, doing the bidding of the British Empire, was the prize of the Revolutionary War. Revolutionary-era war cries like “don’t tread on me,” “no taxation without representation,” and “give me liberty or give me death” all evoke this same thirst for self-determination. To walk one’s own path unobstructed, then, was the original and ultimate goal of the United States.
Think back to your fantasyland. Imagine that the site of its royal-imperial-presidential palace, its National Mall, Kremlin, or Camelot, encourages and enforces adherence to its foundational values without adhering to them itself. Imagine that all of your kingdom’s residents are protected and governed by its principles—except those who live where the king lives.
This would be lunacy. This would be a glaring contradiction. This would be hypocrisy of the highest order. Yes—but it would also be the United States of America.
The federalist delegation of powers and self-governance enjoyed by all 50 states stops short when it comes to the President’s own backyard. District residents and “representatives,” compared to the 99.8 percent of Americans constituting the rest of the country, are completely powerless. For them, there is no power of the individual and no right to self-determination.
Farsighted federalism of this kind cannot remain. The District of Columbia, the heart of this nation, must enjoy the same freedoms as its many neighbors, for what good is a kingdom that betrays those nearest to it?