I debated touching this one, because it is a long opinion peace by Excitable Jamelle Bouie, which would require a long, long post. One which attempts to rewrite the Constitution and the point in order to invest the federal government with all the power. One which you folks can figure out in a heartbeat
The Whole Point of the Constitution Was to Weaken the States
As millions of Americans see it, the Constitution was written to protect and extend the powers and prerogatives of the states. It established a “limited” national government and preserved, for state governments, any number of rights and responsibilities.
The whole point of the Constitution, in this view, is to restrain the federal government as much as possible. If there is one reason, beyond partisanship, that anyone is attracted to a plainly deficient idea like the “independent state legislature” doctrine (which I wrote about last week), it is that it’s in line with the widespread belief that state governments have pride of place within the American constitutional order.
It’s a cute start, but, the entire point of the Constitution was to invest certain powers in the federal government, in order to bring together all the states under one banner, something that was missing with the Articles of Confederation. With the AC you essentially had 13 separate countries thinking about doing their own thing. Let’s remember, the word “state”, at the time, really referred to nations. When they play Hail To The Chief, the chief of what? Of state. State meant nation. A new term came about because we called the former colonies states: nation-state. Well, the Constitution invested the power to raise an army, national monetary policy (rather than each state having their own), control of national borders, and more. But, they were limited and specific, with everything else left to the states.
And the People. All these leftist pundits forget about that.
But this is a misunderstanding. Even in the age when state governments were more independent and autonomous than they are today — the nearly 80 years between ratification and Appomattox — it was still understood that states were subordinate to the federal government. In turn, the federal government had considerable power to act on and influence the states. Why else would the statesmen of antebellum South Carolina develop a theory of nullification, if not to challenge the prevailing view that states were bound to submit to the will of national government?
But, only on certain things. Things laid out specifically in writing. The Senate was meant to be comprised of people who specifically represented the will of each state, as appointed by each state’s general assembly. They were ambassadors from the states, who weren’t concerned with the national parties.
Go back a little further, to the first years of the American republic, and you will see that one of the key goals of the Constitution was to curb the power of the states and leash them to the broader authority of a new national government led by a powerful legislature and an unusually strong elected executive.
You can see where Jamelle is going with this, right? That the federal government is the supreme everything, that it is the only rule that matters, no matter what the issue. That there should be this Centralized government which can dictate all things. Something the Framers really, really did not want, understanding that the governments of the states were much closer to the citizens, understanding their needs and wants, much better than people divorced from reality in tiny D.C.
Jamelle continues with his misreading for many more paragraphs, ending with
Remembering that the Constitution was written in significant part to weaken and undermine state governments is, I think, the first step toward asserting the power of Congress, not just over the states but over institutions, like the courts, whose power has run far ahead of our system’s checks and balances.
And this is how you create an authoritarian system. Idiots like Jamelle never seem to realize that this would negatively affect their own lives. But, go ahead and try, and see how fast the nation splits in two for real.
Read: NY Times: The Whole Point Of The Constitution Was To Weaken The States, You Know »
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