As Publius says, this is the crux of the issue... {I am a bit sick and have just scanned the article... will read it in detail later} Whatever one may think about the issue of slavery [I think it is abominable] it is difficult for people to realize that one perhaps unintended side effect to the War Between the States was the weakening of state's rights... because of the heavy hand of Lincoln and his decision that the Union was the most important principle to be enforced. He even deported an Ohio congressman to Canada that loudly opposed him!
Washington carpetbaggers further emaciated state's rights with the Fourth Branch of government: the federal bureaucracies. By sneaking through the income tax amendment Washington began to drain wealth from the local communities, constructed the 'Agencies' and told the state's they could have their money back if they did certain things. It would appear on the surface that it is a violation of the Constitution - but it is not because the states can say 'No thanks' and not get any of their money back.
The whole system has been corrupted.
(Publius:) The democratic socialist paradigm is failing, and no one is quite sure what will replace it. But it will be either Federalism or Fascism.
We see with this ebola outrage the incompetence of the feds to deal with problems - yet the public still thinks that the answer to all their problems rests with the government... get an education, buy a house, get a raise, pay your rent, feed your children, get a job - get a promotion, etc., etc., etc. ... on and on! I do not know if we can break this dependence cum loss of freedom. It requires a mammoth educational outbreak - and the opposition holds all the popular media to carry on the fight for enslavement.
Baker had served as a senator from Illinois, which is how Lincoln came to know him. He was a welcome guest at the Lincoln home in Springfield where he was called “Uncle Ned” by the children. Baker went to Oregon when it became a state in order to make his fortune, but he found himself chosen by the legislature as Oregon’s senator because of his prior experience.
When the Civil War broke out, Baker left the Senate to accept a commission as a Brigadier General in the Union Army. Just before leaving to go to war, Baker came to dinner with the Lincoln family at the White House where he gave the President the kind of dressing down that only a close friend could give.
Baker argued that the states were the source of the whole problem, and the first thing that should be done at the war’s conclusion should be to abolish the states entirely and reorganize the country into military districts for complete governance by the federal entity. Lincoln laughed his suggestion off and privately classified Baker with the “Jacobins”, his name for the men who would later become known as the Radical Republicans.
Baker died in Virginia at the Battle of Balls Bluff in a botched retreat. Had he lived, he would have joined the most extreme of the Radicals in Congress after the war. We dodged a bullet.