Federalism, Freedom and Diversity Part II

Subtitle: Federalism Thwarts Consolidated Government. Federalism describes the vertical division of power between the national and state governments. When Constitutional government is limited to its enumerated powers by a federal senate, the states are free to develop and retain their uniqueness, to keep their largely homogenous interests, habits, and mores. This is diversity. THIS is how republican government is sustained across a vast continent. Federalism keeps consolidation at bay, and makes diversity a reality!

However, overnight, the Seventeenth Amendment transformed a stable, federal republic into a wild and unstable democratic form. Being unanchored by senators formerly loyal to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, the last hundred years of social justice warrior scotus judges midwifed America’s transition from a republic of republics into the near-consolidated mass expected long ago by the Anti-Federalists.

Imagine a Return to Federalism. So what if Massachusetts amends its constitution to promote homosexuality through its public schools? While I know it harms society, I don’t live in Massachusetts and shouldn’t have any say in how the Bay State treats its culture. Just as I have no business reaching into and affecting another state’s traditions and mores, neither may the scotus reach down into fifty societies and order them to engage in societal destruction. What scotus increasingly does, when it casts diktats affecting the family, and thus society, has more in common with foolish despots described in Part I. Unlike wise despots, our scotus is too dense to understand that corrupting common and beneficial traditions through nationwide court decisions stokes disgust and hatred for the federal court system.

Pragmatic implementation is needed. We have enough theory.

Eliminate ATF. Eliminate all Fed sin taxes. Let states levy and collect them. Let states regulate them.

Eliminate FBI role in bank robbery. FBI is only involved due to ego of J Edgar Hoover 90 years ago.

Eliminate Fed Dept of Transportation and all Fed transportation and energy taxes. Interstate highways? Mission Accomplished. Only short connectors and a lot of maintenance yet to be done. State and local can do that better than the Feds.

Mass transit? The people who want it are concentrated in a few states. That makes it a state issue.

Airport landing and passenger fees? Let the states levy and collect them.

The main role of these at the federal level is for Presidents and Congressional Leadership to use the above to BRIBE Congress critters into supporting omnibus bills they would not otherwise support.

Remove this ability to BRIBE and the quality of other bills will improve.

GREAT post. Thanks. Speaking of anti-federalists...

The most important question that was ever proposed to your decision, or to the decision of any people under heaven, is before you, and you are to decide upon it by men of your own election, chosen specially for this purpose. If the constitution, offered to your acceptance, be a wise one, calculated to preserve the invaluable blessings of liberty, to secure the inestimable rights of mankind, and promote human happiness, then, if you accept it, you will lay a lasting foundation of happiness for millions yet unborn; generations to come will rise up and call you blessed. You may rejoice in the prospects of this vast extended continent becoming filled with freemen, who will assert the dignity of human nature. You may solace yourselves with the idea, that society, in this favoured land, will fast advance to the highest point of perfection; the human mind will expand in knowledge and virtue, and the golden age be, in some measure, realised. But if, on the other hand, this form of government contains principles that will lead to the subversion of liberty — if it tends to establish a despotism, or, what is worse, a tyrannic aristocracy; then, if you adopt it, this only remaining assylum for liberty will be shut up, and posterity will execrate your memory.

Momentous then is the question you have to determine, and you are called upon by every motive which should influence a noble and virtuous mind, to examine it well, and to make up a wise judgment. It is insisted, indeed, that this constitution must be received, be it ever so imperfect. If it has its defects, it is said, they can be best amended when they are experienced. But remember, when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force. Many instances can be produced in which the people have voluntarily increased the powers of their rulers; but few, if any, in which rulers have willingly abridged their authority. This is a sufficient reason to induce you to be careful, in the first instance, how you deposit the powers of government.

So far therefore as its powers reach, all ideas of confederation are given up and lost. It is true this government is limited to certain objects, or to speak more properly, some small degree of power is still left to the states, but a little attention to the powers vested in the general government, will convince every candid man, that if it is capable of being executed, all that is reserved for the individual states must very soon be annihilated, except so far as they are barely necessary to the organization of the general government. The powers of the general legislature extend to every case that is of the least importance — there is nothing valuable to human nature, nothing dear to freemen, but what is within its power. It has authority to make laws which will affect the lives, the liberty, and property of every man in the United States; nor can the constitution or laws of any state, in any way prevent or impede the full and complete execution of every power given. The legislative power is competent to lay taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; — there is no limitation to this power…

And are by this clause invested with the power of making all laws, proper and necessary, for carrying all these into execution; and they may so exercise this power as entirely to annihilate all the state governments, and reduce this country to one single government. And if they may do it, it is pretty certain they will; for it will be found that the power retained by individual states, small as it is, will be a clog upon the wheels of the government of the United States; the latter therefore will be naturally inclined to remove it out of the way. Besides, it is a truth confirmed by the unerring experience of ages, that every man, and every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it, and to acquire a superiority over every thing that stands in their way. This disposition, which is implanted in human nature, will operate in the federal legislature to lessen and ultimately to subvert the state authority, and having such advantages, will most certainly succeed, if the federal government succeeds at all.

In a free republic…

Brutus #1 - Anti-federalist

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