The Original States-Oriented Government

If the Federal Government is mighty and all powerful like a lot of people tend to claim nowadays, and if they have the jurisdiction to make laws and stick their noses in just about every issue under the sun, then what exactly were all the other rights the Founding Fathers said they were granting the states in the 10th Amendment? It doesn’t seem like states have a whole lot of power over much of anything, but it’s not because that’s how the Founders intended our nation to be run. The whole structure of how our government conducts business, what issues are dealt with and what level of government handles those issues was turned upside down some time in our nations history.

Many claim that necessity caused this, but even necessity should not lead us to purposefully misread the Constitution to fit our selfish needs. Law is law and even the Constitution can be changed to fit the changing times; instead we started making assumptions or completely started interpreting the Constitution in ways that gave new meaning to old words in the document to justify new government actions.

States rights went down the drain when states of the old Confederacy used the argument to justify their democratic rights to slavery. When the Union won the war and history books linked states rights to the slave South, it became one of those issues that brought back bad memories. Of course there are and should be limits to what we can democratically choose to do. We can’t and shouldn’t be able to violate the most fundamental rights of others with a majority vote.

What we’ve done because states rights has been linked to slavery is completely put the power to governing in the hands of politicians in Washington when that power was meant to be placed more locally in state capitals. As a result, the people making decisions for us are far more removed from the realities and problems of daily life in Congressional districts than they would be if those decisions were made in state capitals.

If this were so, the politicians who represented us would more likely be like us, look like us, be of a similar income level as us, or live in our own neighborhood. They would have better communication with constituents and be more effective at delivering results. This doesn’t happen because all the relevant decisions are now made in what I can imagine is a distant place for anyone living in the Mid-West and the West Coast. How often do those Congressmen actually meet with their constituents?

Perhaps peoples’ frustrations with the quality of our democracy would be alleviated if the decisions being made were made by state governments who are more accurate representations of smaller samples of the nation. Abortion law, laws on gay marriage and gun control would be more in line with the states’ views on those issues. I’m sure the Founders would be confused if you told them there is a Constitutional right to some medical procedure that is never mentioned in the Constitution and is not relevant to the Constitution.

The Founders granted a right for the people to govern themselves by allowing them to choose whether to allow unlimited abortions, outlaw them completely, or formulate some kind of middle ground and they did that by drafting the 10th Amendment. In it they included the right for people to govern themselves on all issues they could predict and others they could not predict would be part of the state or national conversation in the future. Their vagueness was meant to allow for governing on many issues at the state level and not the national level.