'Many liberals who haven't yet moved to Canada have indulged the fantasy of a 'blue state' secessionist movement,' [Richard Thompson Ford, of Stanford University] wrote. 'But the American legal tradition does offer liberals a practical alternative to secession or a condo in Vancouver. It's called federalism, a k a 'state's rights.' Liberals often have a reflexive distaste for decentralization of political power: State and local autonomy strike them as provincial and regressive. But much of the association of federalism with conservative politics is the result of historical accident: There is nothing inherently conservative about limitations on the power of Congress and the executive.'
Decentralization may not be conservative or liberal, but it's certainly libertarian.
