By Ryan McMaken, Mises Wire | February 10, 2026
National states thrive on political centralization, so supporters of central governments are always looking for new ways to consolidate power over regional and local governments.
In the United States, this takes the form of relentless federal efforts to assert control over state policy and to increase the presence of federal agencies in the lives of ordinary people. This can be seen in how the welfare state is overwhelmingly administered by the federal government, and in how federal grants are used to influence state policy in areas ranging from education to transportation, and to healthcare.
Another strategy is to use federal agents to enforce the central state’s agenda directly on residents, with or without the permission of state and local governments. Historically, this has been used in a variety of cases, such as with the Whiskey Rebellion, the Waco Massacre, and the use of the National Guard to force state compliance with federal policies imposed on local schools. (One should also mention the US Civil War, the bloodiest case of the federal government using its troops against Americans.)
In more recent years, federal politicians have been pushing to further normalize increased usage of federal soldiers and federal police inside the United States. For example, the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to send in federalized national guard troops to enforce the law in US cities —something forbidden by the Posse Comitatus Act—over the objections of state officials. Moreover, federal immigration police have been sent to enforce federal law in jurisdictions where local officials are opposed.
Over the years, advocates of greater federal power have provided a variety of explanations and excuses for this application of federal power. One explanation in particular is often used by the current administration and has often been used historically by propagandists for both political parties. It is this: direct federal intervention is necessary because the policies in one state affect all other states thanks to the presence of open borders between all US states. Put another way, the argument here is essentially that territorial unity requires unity in policy and politics as well.
How State-to-State Open Borders Fuel Calls for More Federal Power
For example, advocates of gun control argue that since anyone can travel freely between states, loose gun policies in one state effectively cancel out the stricter gun policies in neighboring states. Similarly, advocates of drug prohibition have opposed the legalization of recreational marijuana in some states because that supposedly makes it too easy to transport drugs into other states. (This, of course, was also part of the rationale behind nationwide alcohol prohibition during the 1920s.)
Right now, the most visible use of this argument in favor of centralized control is in justifying stronger federal action against local resistance to federal immigration policy. In this case, we’re told that if federal immigration policy is not enforced in all states equally, then those immigrants—some of which are violent—in the more lenient states will effectively be able to travel freely to the rest of the United States. This same argument could be broadened to violent criminals in general, regardless of immigration status. That is, one could argue that if one state is especially lenient on criminals and refuses to jail them, then residents of other states will be put in danger as those criminals travel to other states.
In all these cases the proposed “solution” is to impose uniform policy on all states so that a resident in one state is not forced to deal with the legal externalities—so to speak—of another state’s policies. This, in part, is why gun control advocates were able to obtain federal regulations greatly restricting the ability of residents in one state to buy guns in another state. Similarly, some Republican politicians have sued the State of Colorado in an effort to force federal marijuana prohibitions on everyone nationwide.
This is not a new idea, by the way. Historically, this same dynamic fueled efforts to increase federal enforcement of the fugitive slave laws. Slave owners didn’t like that local and state officials were obstructing efforts by federal agents to kidnap escaped slaves and return them to their masters. The slave owners wanted uniform national policy. The proposed solution? You guessed it: more federal power to force compliance with federal slave policies nationwide.
Now one could easily respond to the perceived problem of state-to-state open borders with this: “well, if you don’t like having an open border with people who refuse to regulate guns (or violent criminals or drugs), then you are welcome to close your border with us and restrict entry for those who you think might be dangerous. You can even leave the union entirely if you like. The rest of us will carry on as usual.” This offers an easy solution which doesn’t require any more power for the central state: if the people of State A are concerned they may be victimized by the people of State B, then the option that is least likely to further empower the central government is to allow people to exit from the mandate of territorial unity.
Needless to say, few Americans would support this since most Americans have been propagandized against true political decentralization. Consequently, we live in a political situation in which gun owners, drug users, criminals, and immigrants can travel freely from state to state, and it is also assumed that no state can do anything to limit movement from one state to another. This clearly steers residents toward thinking that the only allowable “solution” is more federal power to “keep us safe.”
A More Culturally Divided America Requires a Stronger Central Government
We are likely to see even more of this centralization play out as the United States becomes more culturally and ideologically divided. When American ideology was largely held within a more limited band of acceptable opinion—as it was during the “liberal consensus” of the mid-twentieth century—it was easier to push policy uniformity nationwide. In 2026, however, as media has fractured and political opinions have become more “extreme” on both ends, imposing policy uniformity has become more difficult. This bifurcation in political opinion has also been reinforced by the so-called “great sort” in which Americans ”flee” to “places where political views match their own.“
Over time, this will mean that views on matters like guns, crime, drugs, and other areas will continue to diverge. In 2026, Americans can’t even refrain from fighting over which Super Bowl half-time show to watch.
So there are two ways to go with this. The first is to put freedom before political unity and conformity. That is, to embrace actual self-determination, freedom, and decentralization, and to allow locals to go their own way in accordance with their own values.
The other option is to increasingly use the power of the federal state to intervene locally to ensure “unity” in place of self-determination and decentralization.
It is a safe bet that the latter will prevail because most Americans are locked into the idea that the United States must be a single, unitary geographic unit. We will be told it simply is not an option to allow any state or government to do “it’s own thing” because—thanks to those state-to-state open borders—what one state does affects other states.
Both conservatives and Leftists will hold to this because both sides ultimately want to rule over all Americans from the center, and they don’t care if they have to totally destroy federalism and self-determination to do it. So long as either side thinks it has a chance of “winning”—i.e., exercising control over the US regime at least occasionally—then they will choose more centralization and more state power.
Consequently, we’ll quickly find that the choice will be between political unity or freedom. We can’t have both.
There is a third option, but few will support it: simply allow both state-to-state open borders and local autonomy. This, after all, was the de facto reality of the first several decades of the United States. At that time, the federal government was far too weak to impose anything resembling a uniform policy. There was no federal immigration policy, no federal drug policy, and the number of federal crimes could be counted on one hand.
Few modern Americans will embrace that older vision of America. Instead, policymakers will further expand federal power in the name of “managing” and “unifying” diverging state and local policy agendas. If they get their way, they’ll keep doing this until the last few remaining prerogatives of state and local governments are all but abolished.
Ryan McMaken is editor in chief at the Mises Institute, a former economist for the State of Colorado, and the author of two books: Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre. He is also the editor of The Struggle for Liberty: A Libertarian History of Political Thought.
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