This is part 3 of a 6-part article.
Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here
Anti-Federalist Prediction #3: Power Will Flow Away From the States
Prediction: Power will flow consistently away from the states and increase the scope, size, and power of the federal government. Only major crisis, where the federal government falls, will ever send significant powers back to the states.
Again, we are perfectly on target for this even though it has not yet fully matured. Federal budgets now dwarf state costs, and many state programs are funded by federal money.
Indeed, this has become a major misunderstanding in modern America.
The media constantly pounds the populace with the message that government is broken—Washington is in gridlock and accomplishes little. In reality, however, this is highly inaccurate.
Each year Washington manages to drastically increase the budget, debt, and deficit. It is spending more and more annually, and each year Congress authorizes many new programs.
A lot is getting done—many would argue too much!
Perhaps we could learn from the British-published magazine The Economist, which wrote in February 2010:
“It is simply not true to say that nothing can get through Congress. Look at…TARP…The stimulus bill…The Democrats have also passed a long list of lesser bills, from investments in green technology to making it easier for women to sue for sexual discrimination…
“America’s political structure was designed to make legislation at the federal level difficult, not easy. Its founders believed that a country the size of America is best governed locally, not nationally…
“The Senate, much ridiculed for antique practices like the filibuster and the cloture vote, was expressly designed as a ‘cooling’ chamber where bills might indeed die unless they commanded broad support.
“Broad support from the voters is something that both the health bill and the cap-and-trade bill clearly lack.”
The Senate has killed bills from Republican and Democratic presidents through the years, but this should be seen as the success of our mixed democratic republic with checks and balances rather than as government not working.
If the Senate had killed more bills in the past century, the power of the states would not have diminished to such a weakened place.
Both major parties often make the ingenuous mistake of claiming to be carrying out the “democratic” will of the people when they have broad voter support, and then when such support is lacking of blaming the Senate and Congress for gridlock, partisanship, and a system that doesn’t work.
When there is widespread dislike of certain proposed policies, not being able to pass them isn’t gridlock, but good government.
The Senate was designed specifically by the founders to protect the states, to leave most things to the state level and only allow issues to receive federal support when they were wanted by a large majority of Americans and needed to be accomplished at the national level.
Indeed, the system works more often than the modern media gives it credit.
Anti-Federalist Prediction #4: The Courts Will Eventually Have Too Much Power
Prediction: The courts will not only be independent but will eventually have too much power because there are really no effective checks on their decisions.
This has happened and is still increasing in its impact. Without checks on the Supreme Court, states have little recourse against growing federal controls over powers previously (and constitutionally) held by the states.
Our freedoms consistently decrease as the Court expands its interpretation of the role of the federal government in our lives.
To be continued…
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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.
He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
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