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It is important that Americans understand the difference between federalism and anti-federalism. This is because all at once, they seem to overlap, state the opposite case, and state other cases entirely.

“Federalism” on its surface, means “a national government responsive to its individual States.” As such, most of the time, the national government has primacy, but at times, the States can as a group assert primacy. However, in practice it means a *balance* between the power of the federal government and that of the States. It does so with mechanisms found in the constitution. But those mechanisms go far beyond federalism.

For example, most Americans know of the balance that is supposed to exist between the three branches of the federal government. But likewise, there is supposed to be a balance between the powers *outside* of the federal government, in *creating* the federal government. And this is how we achieve “republican democracy.”

The people elect “the people’s house”, the House of Representatives. As originally intended, the individual States are supposed to appoint the United States Senators, though this power was stripped from the States with the 17th Amendment, the direct election of senators. The electoral college was created to overcome the dilemma of a close contest in the presidential election, as an “ad hoc” group of delegates *not* controlled by the US congress. And finally, the president appoints Supreme Court justices, again with the approval of the States, by their delegates, the US senators

A complicated balancing act.

Instead of calling themselves “anti-federalists”, more properly they should have been called “confederates”, because at the time of the constitution of the United States, they did not want primacy in the national government, but wanted the national government to work as the agent of the individual States.

Their idea, of an “articles of confederation” of the United States, was at the time the true opposite of a strong national government in the form of federalism, and remained so through the US Civil War.

Importantly, there was considerable legitimacy in their arguments, because even from the outset of a constitutional government in the United States, George Washington was the first president to seriously violate the constitution by using the military against the people, in the “Whiskey Rebellion”. And ever since that time, the national government has tried and succeeded in enlarging its power at the expense of the individual States and the people.

So even though today “federalists” advocating “federalism”, are calling for power to be returned from the national government to the individual States and to the people, at the onset of the republic, the “federalists”, especially Alexander Hamilton, were calling for a strong national government.

Conversely, the “anti-federalists” back then, who were truly “confederates”, continued with their criticisms of the national government and the US constitution, again all the way up to the US Civil War, when they wrote their “Constitution of the Confederate States of America”. This is a document that should be reviewed by modern federalists, because setting aside the issue of slavery, the confederates made some interesting and wise changes, such as the presidential line item veto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_Constitution

(full text)

http://www.usconstitution.net/csa.html

So today, while “federalists” look for a return to the balance of power between the national government, and the State governments and the people, there is no good name for those who support an even more centralized and powerful national government.

Other than “tyrants”, I suppose.

Today’s federalists are again aligned with the anti-federalist confederates, both seeking the restoration of a constitutional government that is no longer running wild, spending beyond any sense of reason, pursuing everlasting foreign entanglements, and no longer entirely loyal to our nation, beholden to other interests.

Instead, the individual States once again need to appoint US senators, and thus we need a repeal of the 17th Amendment, and again the individual States need to stand between and protect the people from the direct power of the national government. This would be achieved by the repeal of the 16th Amendment, the Income Tax, and its replacement with a more orderly form of taxation.