What is the proper role of federal, state and local
governments? There was a time when
Americans knew. Now, thanks to
Progressives, those lines have been blurred.
I posted this a couple of years ago.
Read to the end, when Tocqueville describes what happens to people who
do not understand federalism.
Alexis de Tocqueville
when traveling the United State in the early 1800’s wrote about Americans and
their familiarity with the role of federal, state and local governments. He
also wrote about the fate of countries who tried to replicate our style of government
without understanding it.
Here is an excerpt from his Democracy in America:
Once the general theory is well understood, the difficulties of applying it remain; these are countless because the sovereignty of the Union is so entwined in that of the states that it is impossible at first glance to see its limits. Everything in such a government is arbitrary and contrived and it can only suit a nation long accustomed to self-government and where political science reaches right down to the lowest rungs of society. Nothing has made me admire the good sense and practical intelligence of the Americans more than the way they evade the countless difficulties which derive from their federal constitution. I have scarcely ever encountered a single man of the common people in America who did not perceive with surprising ease the obligations entailed in the laws of Congress and those which owe their beginnings to the laws of his own state, nor who could not separate the matters belonging to the general prerogatives of the Union from those regulated by his local legislature and who could not point to where the competence of the federal courts begins and the limitation of the state tribunals ends.
Do the above describe today’s average American? I don’t think so. Just look at the courts of today. The federal judiciary is usurping the powers of the state tribunals. The federal government is dictating to the states and its citizens what it can and can’t do. Is this what our founding fathers envisioned?
Tocqueville further states what happens to those nations who replicate, but don’t follow the SPIRIT of our Constitution as understood by our founding fathers:
The Constitution of the United States is akin to those fine creations of human endeavor which crown their inventors with renown and wealth but remain sterile in others hands.
Contemporary Mexico has illustrated this very thing.
The Mexicans, aiming for a federal system, took the federal constitution of their neighbors, the Anglo-Americans, as their model and copied it almost exactly. But although they transported the letter of the law, they failed to transfer at the same time the spirit which gave it life. As a result, they became tangled endlessly in the machinery of the double system of government. The sovereignty of the states and Union entered into a collision course as they exceeded the sphere of influence assigned to them by the constitution. Even today Mexico veers constantly from anarchy to military despotism and back again.
Here is an excerpt from his Democracy in America:
Once the general theory is well understood, the difficulties of applying it remain; these are countless because the sovereignty of the Union is so entwined in that of the states that it is impossible at first glance to see its limits. Everything in such a government is arbitrary and contrived and it can only suit a nation long accustomed to self-government and where political science reaches right down to the lowest rungs of society. Nothing has made me admire the good sense and practical intelligence of the Americans more than the way they evade the countless difficulties which derive from their federal constitution. I have scarcely ever encountered a single man of the common people in America who did not perceive with surprising ease the obligations entailed in the laws of Congress and those which owe their beginnings to the laws of his own state, nor who could not separate the matters belonging to the general prerogatives of the Union from those regulated by his local legislature and who could not point to where the competence of the federal courts begins and the limitation of the state tribunals ends.
Do the above describe today’s average American? I don’t think so. Just look at the courts of today. The federal judiciary is usurping the powers of the state tribunals. The federal government is dictating to the states and its citizens what it can and can’t do. Is this what our founding fathers envisioned?
Tocqueville further states what happens to those nations who replicate, but don’t follow the SPIRIT of our Constitution as understood by our founding fathers:
The Constitution of the United States is akin to those fine creations of human endeavor which crown their inventors with renown and wealth but remain sterile in others hands.
Contemporary Mexico has illustrated this very thing.
The Mexicans, aiming for a federal system, took the federal constitution of their neighbors, the Anglo-Americans, as their model and copied it almost exactly. But although they transported the letter of the law, they failed to transfer at the same time the spirit which gave it life. As a result, they became tangled endlessly in the machinery of the double system of government. The sovereignty of the states and Union entered into a collision course as they exceeded the sphere of influence assigned to them by the constitution. Even today Mexico veers constantly from anarchy to military despotism and back again.
H/T: Video NC Renegade
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