How I Learned to Stop Worrying About My Neighbor and Love Federalism

In his book Suicide of a Superpower, Patrick Buchanan lays out just how deeply divided our nation is today. He would argue that our divisions go even deeper than they did at the time of the Civil War. The root cause, he argues, is that we no longer share the same cultural bonds that we used to. Time was, people merely accepted that Christmas and Easter were widely celebrated holy days of the majority of Americans. Now we see battles fought in court every year over the display of religion in the public square. People used to come to America and assimilate into an American culture, but more and more immigrants bring their culture and language with them to their new home, according to Buchannan.

In Power Divided is Power Checked, libertarian radio personality Jason Lewis argues that we have the Constitution to bind us together, but I would argue that ever more we don’t agree on what that means, either. Take just the 1^st Amendment for example; people can hardly agree on what effect, if any, the 1^st Amendment has on the availability of pornography in public libraries, whether political speech should be shunted in certain instances (campaign finance reform comes to mind), and whether public monies benefitting private schools constitute establishment of religion. The North and the South, after the war was over, at least had a common culture to return to, but we do not. It would seem that our divisions do indeed run much deeper.

Even in the past when issues divided America, people would come down on one side or the other, but our current situation has so many competing interests that to pick a side means joining a loose-knit group of other interests that may run counter to other interests of your own. It is a process of choosing the least of a thousand evils. Oftentimes, this comes down to choosing one of two parties in our federal elections: Democrats or Republicans. Since our federal system is not parliamentary, where the executive is elected by coalition vote in the legislature, it is not suited to multiparty politics because voting third party merely dilutes your vote. You third party folks out there can think what you want, but the effect of voting off-ticket is that you feel good and accomplish nothing. It is political masturbation.

Every federal election becomes an opportunity to exercise influence over your fellow man. Even Senate, Governor, and House of Representatives races draw contributions from outside their districts from people who feel unable to influence the situation in their district or state. This is because power and authority in the USA are so concentrated at the federal level that people look to the federal government for everything. If you want something one way, you have to fight to impose that way on everyone. When we shared a common culture, that was okay, but with America’s deep cultural divisions, imposing a law on everyone means intense blowback from your neighbor and constant fighting to keep that law in place.

Even among my libertarian friends, there is a tendency to fall into the centralization trap and place one’s hopes in a central figure like a presidential candidate or a senator. In hindsight, it has become more and more obvious to me that our Founders, a group often derided today as WASPs, slave owners, or a ”bunch of dead white guys” designed a system that can accommodate wide ranges of diversity on social and fiscal issues and huge differences in culture. This system allows us to keep our most powerful politicians close and accountable while making distant politicians less of a factor on our day to day lives. It is a system that we have gradually moved away from in the last 125 years. It is in our Constitution. It is Federalism.

Simply defined, Federalism is the sovereignty of the states, and it’s making a comeback. When the federal legislature passed a health care bill that threatened to nationalize medical care and bankrupt state programs, more than half the states pushed back with court challenges to that law. When the federal government refused to secure the national border between Mexico and Arizona, the state of Arizona decided to take enforcement into its own hands. Other states followed suit. Presently that battle is being played out in court. Arizona is also investigating federal officials for their role in transferring illegal firearms into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in a program dubbed “Fast and Furious.” The state is asserting that it may have cause to prosecute federal officials for violating state law. The state of Wisconsin, under Governor Scott Walker has returned or refused grants of federal money that had been approved prior to his election because many in Wisconsin do not want the strings that comes with federal funds. These are all examples of pushback by states against a federal government that they see as overreaching.

Under federalism, states can have many varied different ways of doing everything. Justice Louis Brandeis referred to the states as “laboratories of democracy.” What he meant by that was that the actions of the sovereign states would represent 50 different ways of doing things and by observation, we could see what worked best. For example, if the people in Nebraska liked how the Ohioans were handling their infrastructure issues, they could try to sway local politicians, instead of distant national politicians, to change. If Nebraska wouldn’t change, people could “vote with their feet” and move and Nebraska would lose all the benefit of those people.

Federalism is about trusting people to make the right decisions for themselves, and giving up the busybody notion that people must do things the way you think is best. It means you stop worrying about your neighbor’s behavior. Federalism is the cure for the most divisive of social issues in America. Let me demonstrate:

Abortion: Where do you stand on abortion? Right now two factions fight tooth and nail at the federal level to impose their beliefs on everyone. Under federalism, states would make the call. Are you pro-life? Move your family to a state where abortion is illegal and where you think the people will benefit from a culture of life. Pro-choice? Move to a state where you think society will benefit from a culture of choice and a reduction in unwanted children. Maybe you would prefer a state where abortion is even tax-payer subsidized. Tax payer subsidy of abortion is illegal at the federal level.

Pro-gay marriage? Move to a state that embraces this lifestyle and codifies it in marriage law. That state will attract gay couples and their wealth and talents. Pro traditional marriage? Move to a state that you believe will be blessed for its adherence to the traditional man-woman marriage model. Compare that to the two factions fighting to impose one way or the other on all of us.

How about welfare? If you like a government that takes care of the downtrodden despite the high cost, there’s a state for you! Prefer a meritocracy with less safety net but lower taxes? There’s a state for you! Move there and don’t worry about how they do it in another state.

Ever noticed how Congress tries to draw districts so that certain people elect representation that supposedly looks like them (called gerrymandering)? With Federalism, like people will congregate together naturally without phony congressional line drawing.

Invariably during a discussion of federalism someone will bring up the failure of the Articles of Confederation and how the country needed a stronger national government to raise an army, print currency, and a number of other things. I am not advocating a return to the Articles, but to the limited federal government of our Constitution. The current Constitution was the solution to the problems of the Articles of Confederation. Limiting the federal government to those powers expressly given it by the Constitution means that we can all be countrymen without trying to impose our beliefs on each other. We'll still have a common currency, a common military, and protection for our diverse beliefs.

The nice thing about federalism is that it’s already in our Constitution. The nice thing about becoming a Federalist now is that there are lots of examples of states exercising their sovereign powers. If you have never read the Constitution of the United States of America, do so now; it’s not much longer than this article and far better-written. It’s also chock-full of guarantees of your personal liberties, granted to you by natural law, not government, and limitations on the federal government’s exercise of power that we have allowed politicians to ignore over the years, to our own peril. The 9^th and 10^th Amendments to the Constitution (part of the Bill of Rights; read that, too) guarantee the sovereignty of the states and individuals in matters where the federal government is not specifically empowered by the Constitution. That reading is part of step 1: educate yourself.

Step 2 is to change the way you talk to your elected officials. Remind federal office-holders of their limitations and remind state and local office-holders that they need to fight an overreaching federal government. It’s not easy. Federal officials like to think of themselves as all-powerful and state officials like federal money (which is merely taken from one state and returned to another, or borrowed, or printed by the Federal Reserve).

Lastly, educate others about federalism. It won’t happen overnight. In fact, people will think you’re a bit screwy because federalism flies in the face of the way we’ve been doing things for a long time. I think it is our only option, though. If we keep trying to push our views on others the way we do now, we will always be fighting. Trying to return America to a homogenous culture would be like trying to squeeze toothpaste back into a tube, and isn’t really desirable anyway. The solution to America’s modern problems of multiple races, creeds, orientations, and languages was indeed designed in the 18^th century by a bunch of English-speaking WASP’s.