The case against D.C. statehood

This is not to suggest that there are no serious practical arguments against D.C. statehood. In fact, a detailed list of them would exhaust the space of a short column. The first and most important one is simply that the creation of a new state is not the most obvious or straightforward solution to the ostensible grievances of longtime pro-statehood agitators. If the point were really all the liberal gas about taxation without representation, a much simpler answer would be to return all of the district minus the immediate area surrounding the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court to Maryland (or to give it to Virginia).

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If admitted to the Union as a state in its own right, Washington or New Columbia or Pronoun City or whatever they could get away with calling it in 2020 would not only be far and away the smallest state in geographical terms; it would have the third lowest population but the highest median household income and unprecedented influence over the workings of the federal government, which it would contain and, in many ways, effectively control. (This ultimately was the reason that Britain was forced to create new devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, in order to balance out de facto English authority over the center of the kingdom.) It would also be the only state with no rural population. It would be, constitutionally speaking, a freak, an arbitrary creation that would forever alter the meaning of statehood itself.

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Moreover, it would leave us with no answer to the question of why we should not grant statehood to New York City or Los Angeles or Houston, with their vast GDPs and enormous, ever-expanding populations.

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