If there was ever a cause for federalism, another government shutdown is it. It shows us clearly that it’s past time for state legislators and governors to reclaim federal power back to their states and return control over many activities that have been stolen by Washington. Not everything has to be federalized.
Our government was once based on federalism, which is a word that sounds like it would favor the national or federal government but it is actually the idea that power is balanced between the national, state and local levels.
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote that federalism meant “a proper respect for state functions, a recognition of the fact that the entire country is made up of a union of separate state governments, and a continuance of the belief that the national government will fare best if the States and their institutions are left free to perform their separate functions in their separate ways.”
Boy, have we lost our path.
The federal government has its hands in too many pies. Does the Small Business Administration sound like something that should be a federal function? Not to me and I dare say not to anyone running a small business. They don’t need big brother looking over their shoulder regulating, documenting and taxing every aspect of an individual’s business. That’s best left to state legislatures or better yet, local city and county councils where those businesses reside. Health care, education and land management are other areas that were constitutionally left to the states, but you would not know it today.
Following Hugo Black’s line of thinking, according to Bruce Walker, writing for The American Thinker, federalism is a way of allowing the marketplace of governments to generally improve government. Good governance and ideas would bubble to the top and bad governance would go by the wayside. The thought is that people would flee from the states that are corrupt or incompetently run. Those who don’t run must like the government they created, but no one these days is able to flee the federal model of “one size fits all and we will regulate all.” The monster of the federal government has the authority to make laws which will affect the lives, liberty and property of every person in the United States and destroys the power of the marketplace of governments.
More and more people are looking askance at our centralized government model. The one where a few elites in a small, though wealthy, city on the East Coast can at their political whim shut down services and departments that affect all of America. The designation between essential and non-essential is a good argument for permanently shutting down some of these so-called non-essential parts. Why do they exist if they are not essential? The federal bureaucracy created them is why.
That same bureaucracy with its Byzantine hiring processes that make it difficult to hire the best and nearly impossible to fire the worst. The federal government needs to get back to its core functions doing very few jobs but doing them well. Provide for the common defense, pay the debts, regulate commerce between the states and other nations, and coin money.
According to The Spectrum.com reflecting on economist Friedrich Hayek’s teachings, “When we’re talking about matters that lie outside those few areas that constitutionally belong to the federal government, we should leave it to the states. It may take longer, but the outcomes will be more effective, longer lasting and more affordable.”
It’s time to resuscitate the 10th Amendment.
As citizens of a free republic it is our duty to preserve it. If you would like to take a free online course on the U. S. Constitution go to: www.freeconstitutioncourse.com.
Mikie Kerr is a constitutional enthusiast who lives in Waikoloa and writes a monthly column for West Hawaii Today.
