“....not be a prisoner of a framework.”
It is that framework that has kept us solid and becoming the strongest nation in the world and free to do what we wish to in most cases. But violating the law of the land is not one of them.
The founders established a basic set of “rules.” The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. ... The Founders believed very strongly in states’ rights because they understood that the surest way to maintain individual liberty was to instill safeguards against centralized power. In other words, the states could protect themselves from the federal government.
Those states’ rights are now being used, in my mind, to accomplish a political goal and not in the best interest of the constituents of each state. But as long as it can be determined that the actions of the many states are their best efforts to protect the citizens within the state, Trump can’t do a thing about it.
James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 45:
“The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”
The Founders believed very strongly in states’ rights because they understood that the surest way to maintain individual liberty was to instill safeguards against centralized power. Not only would establishing several smaller governments (the states) afford people the ability to move elsewhere, but they would also have more of a say in the public affairs of their surroundings. More simply, citizens would be closer to the people who were making decisions on their behalf and had the power of the centralized vote to back it up just in their region, not across the country, with issues pertaining just to them.
The very people who drafted the US Constitution itself had enough distrust in federal power and humility in themselves that they made clear that most of our decisions should not be made in the nation’s capital. And now that the states as a unit may have come up with a way to infringe upon the citizens for the local governments’ purposes, it is arguable that it is treason. But try and prove that one when better than half of the country by numbers supports the very people that are doing it.
rwood
Nice theoretical arguments, and ones that I support, but two problems with them - 1) They will lose currency in the emotional and frenzied atmosphere in the runup to the fall elections 2) Trump is not the most articulate defender of these values.