Posted on 05/16/2010 6:45:05 PM PDT by Bokababe
Representative Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay, CA) joined Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Tom Price (R-GA), Congressman Rob Bishop (R-UT) and nine other Republican Members of Congress to officially launch the newly formed 10th Amendment Task Force, a project of the RSC. The Task Force will develop and promote proposals that aim to disperse power, decision-making, and money from Washington back to states, local governments, and individuals.
The Task Force was created in response to the concentration of power and the one-size-fits-all solutions from Washington. Representative McClintock made the following remarks at todays press conference:
I believe that it can be stated as a universal maxim that the failures of our government can be traced to a single cause: the abandonment of federalism.
The tenth Amendment was not written to protect states rights. Experience has shown that state governments can be just as abusive of their authority as any other government.
The tenth Amendment is rather about dividing governmental authority to limit the abuse of power that naturally occurs when it accumulates into too few hands.
The Founders knew that the ultimate check upon an abusive or dysfunctional government is the ability of people to walk away from it. By limiting the federal government to those enumerated powers that serve a truly national objective, our Constitution disperses the remaining powers among 50 states and a hundred fold more communities.
Those states that are governed unwisely naturally lose population and commerce and revenues to those that are governed well. It is a self-correcting mechanism.
In 1821, Jefferson warned that "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
We have reached that point, and the time has come to restore the genius of the American founding by restoring those principles of federalism that are the foundation of our freedom and the natural ramparts that protect us against both folly and despotism.
I cant imagine more important work than that which this task force now sets out to do.
GOP TOM GO BTT
Tom McClintock is one of the few remaining good things about CA!
FYI Californians: Tom endorses Steve Poizner.
No, he is correct. The delegation of authority is from the People, through their elected representatives in a Constitutional Convention, not the States. The People are the master, the state and federal government are the servants. The only power they have is what the People have given them through their written constitutions. In America, and this is an important difference from Europe, individuals retain power that they have not delegated. They kept back individual liberties from government over which authority was not delegated. The exercise therof was subject to the Maxim “sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas” - each one must so use his own as not to injure his neighbor. (Equality of rights before the law.)
In France, the individual surrendered all his individual natural power in exchange for what was considered to be superior enumerated civil rights which were subject to the communal good.
Tom McClintock is more than a promise. He delivers.
I wonder what that would mean for a place like Yellowstone, which is shared by Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. I suppose the three state legisl00tures could hammer out an agreement, subject to approval by Congress per the Constitution, of course.
I hope that this task force studies the ramifications of repealing the 17th Amendment, as long as they are all about dispersal of power back to the states and the people. Repeal would return us to a federal Senate, but could also give us more Democrat Senators.
Having read some of the Founders' thoughts and other writers that followed, it appears to me the idea was that The States themselves would be jealous guardians of their retained powers, thereby keeping the feral government in check.
I think we would all agree, something went awry.
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