September 17, 2015
Liberals and devolution
From our overstocked archives
Sam Smith, 2010 - Every once in a while, someone in power says something that inadvertently summarizes a problem. For example, last night Chris Matthews twice said that talk of the Tenth Amendment made him think of the Civil War.
Supporting an original part of the Bill of Rights is a virtual act of secession? Herein lies one huge problem with contemporary liberals: they no longer understand or believe in the proper devolution of power that was at the heart of our initial federal system. . . the idea that government should be carried out at the lowest practical level. Instead, they have come to believe in an oligarchy of the hyper rich, hyper educated and hyper powerful that is hyper centered in Washington.
It is not what Jeffersonian Democrats believed; nor did progressives as late as the 1960s. And the change has done nothing but damage the support liberals might otherwise have. After all, removing people's power does not go unnoticed and the size of one's opposition grows with its recognition.
True, citizens' rights are a federal responsibility. But that does not justify Washington, for example, turning over two centuries of public education to a federally supervised, corporately controlled school system.
If you can't tell the difference between protecting citizens' rights and determining what books a child shall read in class, you don't belong in politics at all.
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3 comments:
Sam, when is the last time red states did anything right?
If you are a progressive living in a red state, the last thing you want is more state's rights.
I would like to see the Federal government take over most functions currently performed by state and local governments -- education, roads, and what remains of the safety net. Somehow I will force myself to live with the tyranny of roads funded by progressive Federal income taxes & deficit spending, rather than by regressive local taxes.
they no longer understand or believe in the proper devolution of power that was at the heart of our initial federal system. . . the idea that government should be carried out at the lowest practical level.
Sam, please say you got confused. The whole point of the federal system was to concentrate power. At the top! That's exactly what Richard Henry Lee meant in his appalled response on reading the draft of the proposed federal constitution: "It cannot be denied, with truth, that this new Constitution is, in its first principles, highly and dangerously oligarchic"
MN gov Rudy Perpich opposed use of his national guard in central america. Then the guard became how Iraq was occupied. Ventura said the CIA had a full time agent employed by the state. Bush v. Gore showed how the federal gvt steps in even when it knows it is illegal to do so. The consolidation of power at the federal level is through its singular purpose to overthrow the constitution, still unnoticed by the good Germans to whose communications it listens as if on a party line.
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