At a time when we are witnessing new, insidious efforts to divide our nation by punishing tax-payers and rewarding the "entitlement" demographic, widening the socio-economic gap by thwarting job creation and vilifying the industrious, advocating victimhood and promoting punitive wealth-redistribution, usurping states' rights and expanding executive power, and fomenting racial discord, the Founders, in their divinely-inspired wisdom, addressed these dangers in the Federalist Papers.
True, the very Federalism proposed by its advocates create the delicate tensions that make the above dangers possible, but in the words of Capitalism apologists, "it's the worst system until you consider all the rest". So it is with Federalism. The faults of the system are revealed in the base nature of man, not in the ideal. What we are seeing, and will see from time to time in the history of our great nation is the fault of Man as the Republican ideal is manipulated to the benefit of a few and the detriment of the whole.
"Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government." - Alexander Hamilton (Emphasis mine.)
Writing to the constituency in New York, Hamilton wisely proposed: "It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." (Emphasis mine.)
Federalism, while strengthening the whole, is firmly based on the will of We the People, not the whims of current power-hungry politicians.
"[T]he vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people". (Emphasis mine.) Boy, this sounds familiar!
The "vigor of government" presupposes its authority in the will of The People, a foundation that our current politicians have nearly succeeded in crushing. "Sound and well-informed judgment" has been replaced with blatant propaganda and lies from this administration, as "dangerous ambition" under the guise of social justice, or "zeal for the rights of the people".
"[T]hose men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants." Wait - was this written in the 18th century or today?!
Again, Mr. Hamilton admonishes our young nation's citizens: "In the course of the preceding observations, I have had an eye, my fellow-citizens, to putting you upon your guard against all attempts, from whatever quarter, to influence your decision in a matter of the utmost moment to your welfare, by any impressions other than those which may result from the evidence of truth." (Emphasis mine.)
Again and again, in the short history of the Obama administration, citizens have been enticed to make legislative decisions based on lies.
Hamilton invites the reader to consider the proposal of a Federalist Constitution based on the "evidence of truth":
"I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars:
THE UTILITY OF THE UNION TO YOUR POLITICAL PROSPERITY THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE PRESENT CONFEDERATION TO PRESERVE THAT UNION THE NECESSITY OF A GOVERNMENT AT LEAST EQUALLY ENERGETIC WITH THE ONE PROPOSED, TO THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS OBJECT THE CONFORMITY OF THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION TO THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT ITS ANALOGY TO YOUR OWN STATE CONSTITUTION and lastly, THE ADDITIONAL SECURITY WHICH ITS ADOPTION WILL AFFORD TO THE PRESERVATION OF THAT SPECIES OF GOVERNMENT, TO LIBERTY, AND TO PROPERTY." (Emphasis mine.)
In the last six years, we have witnessed a concerted effort to recreate a confederacy of political and cultural division based upon deception and domination. It behooves us to revisit the "evidence of truth" for a Constitution that preserves our Federalist Republic.
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