The constitution does recognize that there are legitimate national authorities, and even though many of these legitimate authorities have been terribly abused, at their core they remain legitimate.
Real federalism, on the confederacy model, is attractive right now because of the abuses of the national government, but in their extreme, as well, they do not work as well as the balanced approach envisioned by the founding fathers.
The debate between federalism and anti-federalism will never be resolved “one way or another”, because things work best when there is limited contention between the two ideas.
However, this being said, when states ran insane asylums, there were many abusive problems. But this was a product of the times. Had the national government run them at the time, it would have made the same mistakes, or worse.
Eventually the state asylums more or less collapsed, from a combination of institutionalizing people who shouldn’t have been, and the tremendous costs associated with caring for the dangerously mentally ill. In many cases, they were just warehoused, pumped full of drugs and left in a near coma state for 23 out of 24 hours in a day.
In any event, the states no longer want to pay for the high security medical care for the dangerously mentally ill, so have abrogated that responsibility. This leaves only the national government as the institution of last resort.
Given their past horrific misconduct, they can be given no grace at all to provide care without strenuous supervision by non-governmental organizations, and only then after rigorous evaluation of prospective patients.
But someone has to. Society can no longer tolerate the criminally insane walking among them, and prisons are wholly inappropriate for the genuinely insane.
The problem with state run mental health care years ago was very simple ~ there were few treatments that worked in any matter at all. The cold hard choice was between locking someone up at home ~ usually by chaining them to the wall or a pole, or putting them in a facility where there was at least enough supervision that they could walk around from time to time.
The states didn't do that ~ neither did the families ~ mental illness in humans did it and the causes were unknown or unknowable.
Sometime in the 1970s use of several new kinds of psychotropic drugs began and some of them were so efficacious profoundly mentally ill people could literally be allowed to live at home while making use of new inpatient clinics.
Drugs have continued to improve to the point that it's almost inconceivable that folks who suffer bipolar disorder would be locked up provided they use their meds ~ in fact, some bipolar victims have well paying careers ~ frequently in entertainment! Ted Turner is a good example, and others spring to mind easily. That doesn't mean they spend their whole lives on medications ~ but the medications help them spend most of their lives free of incarceration.
Right off hand I can't think of any with schizophrenia who are helped by medicne, but there are drugs that can zonk them enough they can lead peaceful, if not productive lives ~ under close supervision.
The federal government in its manifestation as the federal judiciary has been the enemy to effective control and treatment of the mentally ill. Those judges have put on ideological blinders and refused time after time to allow states to maintain their commitment laws consistent with medical capabilities. State courts who screw up are usually doing so at the direction of rules of practice dictated by federal judges.
That's one of the keys to this problem ~ busting the federal judiciary.
Perhaps the recognition of the National authorities remains legitimate only because the abuse hasn’t been contested sufficiently.
Please clarify your meaning of “Real federalism, on the confederacy model.....”. I’d appreciate your perspective on that.
I believe we agree on many of the points, however returning to my focus we must not only put out the Leftist’s arson fires, but eliminate all possible sparks they can fan back into a flame as they require for their purpose. We can only remain free as long as we can control the mischief of the mischievous.