Federalism is Key to Curing Country's Ailments

If the Founding Fathers of our nation knew one thing beyond their belief in God it was that keeping the government as close to the people as possible was the key to preventing tyranny. Yes, tyranny sounds like a harsh word, but what else would you call the current state of affairs regarding our federal government? The Obama administration and Congress continue to shove spending bill after spending bill down our throats that drive up the national debt while at the same time enacting regulatory reforms aimed at fixing our collective problems. There are multiple problems with this, the foremost being our “representatives” are not debating or in fact reading the bills. That my friend is what I would claim as a form of tyranny. The second and more appalling act of tyranny is that the Obama White House and Congress, both parties included, seem to be running around as if our GDP were some amount of money they had to spend in a certain time frame like Richard Pryor in the movie Brewster’s Millions. At the current rate of spending, even before adding in an encyclopedia-sized climate bill or an even worse Trojan horse socialized healthcare bill our grandchildren will still be paying off this debt. So yes, I would say those two reasons alone are the basis to call what is currently happening a tyranny.

How do we make the madness end? By focusing on what our Founding Fathers inherently knew. That all politics was local and all solutions were the same. There was a reason that the Founders wanted a limited form of national government. They wanted it so much so that they initially created an anemic Articles of Confederation out of fear of just this type of tyranny. The simple point of the matter is this; the enduring strength of the American system of democracy has and always will be Federalism. Keeping the power and the control as close to local as possible is crucial. This is also where the most accountability occurs. The states and local governments when allowed are better adept and equipped to handle their own problems than the overreaching national government. The national government’s solution to one state’s woes is not necessarily going to be effective for another state’s problems no matter how similar they may seem on paper. Furthermore, we’ve seen that the national government cannot be trusted to either keep their hands out of the penny bank of our pay to forward social programs or to actually run those programs efficiently or effectively. Why should we continue to trust them going forward?

We can look to business as a model of how to solve this situation. When your company is hemorrhaging money and going into the tank you don’t fix the problem by spending more, you fix the problem by getting leaner, meaner, and becoming quicker and more agile. Now, dysfunctional states like California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, etc. aside, the overwhelming majority of states have shown they can handle their own affairs and they can do so fairly adeptly. While no system is ever perfect, giving local control back to the people is the best option moving forward. Let us remember the lessons of the Founders and reassert our state sovereignty by calling on the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in the Bill of Rights. Only by unleashing the creativity, energy, and ingenuity of a people free from national mandates that won’t fit their problems can the country begin to come back from the brink.

Have no doubt about it the country is on the precipice of an even greater economic disaster that could bankrupt us. Without fiscal restraint which Washington is loath and unwilling to do and local solutions to problems, there is little hope for any change, whether you can believe in it or not.