States Rights Vs. Federal Rights.

    This post was originally written on 3/25/2012

    This issue is one that people have been arguing about since before our current system of government even existed.  The thing that I think a lot of people lose sight of when arguing about it is that our situation today is very different than the one that was faced by the men who sat down in 1787 to try and create this "more perfect union" that we now have.  Regardless of whether you like the government and culture that we now have, you must remember that the alternative would have been to continue on with being the poor relations of Mother England.  I really don't think that there are too many people left who would have preferred that alternative.
 

5 days to send a letter 140 miles in 1926.

     Back at the dawn of the United States of America, ours was not one big country that spread from sea to shining sea and a little bit beyond.  Your average citizen in Georgia lived their entire life (after coming here) without ever giving much thought to anything that went on outside of Georgia.  There weren't a whole lot of folks loading up the wagons to spend Spring Break in New Hampshire.  When the Constitution was drafted, there really was a big difference between Georgia and New Hampshire.  The lives of those people who lived in the early days of the US were definitely influenced more by the State that they lived in.  Your job was pretty dependent on what resources were available in your area.  If a twister came through and leveled your homestead, it wasn't like people were able to drop what they had going on at home and travel three states to help your community rebuild.

     The point is that back then it made sense to make sure that each state was able to operate independently of all the other states.  One well planned Indian attack, and all the roads between Delaware and everywhere else were effectively closed.  When it can take a month for the mail to get from New York to North Carolina, it makes no sense for questions that need a timely answer to be posed to a central national government.  The type of education that children in Virginia need to grow up and participate in a local economy that revolves around tobacco farming is not the same type of education that children in Massachusetts need to grow up and participate in a local economy that revolves around logging.  This is still true in some cases, but the situations in which this need for local oversight of the ways in which we carry out our activities of daily life are fewer now.

     In today's times, the ease of travel between states and a movement away from simply living off of the land has blurred the lines between the citizens of Maine and the citizens of California.  While there are still some differences, they are no longer so glaring and state specific that the only way for them to be addressed is within the states individually.  The fact that so many of our citizens are now spending parts of their lives in different states as their needs and desires change indicates that we have now moved into an era when there should be more uniformity between the states to aid in easy transitions for those of us who move between the states.

     What this means to the issue of States vs Federal Rights is that we must now transition to a system of government in which the standards for daily life are set uniformly by the Federal government, to ensure that citizens do not have their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness curtailed by the individual states in which they happen to reside.  This is not to say that there is a need for everyone within our country to be exactly like everyone else, it is simply a way to deal with the reality that not every citizen of every state has the same needs as every other citizen in their state either, and state governments should not have any more power than the federal government to try and legislate their citizens into sameness.

     The role of the Federal Government should be to carry out those goals described in the body of our Constitution and meet the needs that all citizens have, regardless of whatever their individual differences may be.  The Federal Government must also be the voice with which we speak to the world, because we are one nation, not a collection of disparate states or regions with different global needs and goals.  Whether every citizen likes it or not, no state is made up entirely of people who think that their state should just secede from the US and go it alone.  Even if one or more states were to try and do that, they would be left as a very small country that was open to attack from all side.  No way in hell are the citizens of the US going to support bailing out Texas if they decide to go be their own country, then get bombed by Mexico and Venezuela.  Since the "take our toys and leave" option isn't really viable for any of the states, it's time for everybody to recognize their national identity and start working with everyone else who lives in this country.

     The role of State Government should be to implement and maintain the standards set by the Federal government for governing the citizens of the state.  State Governments must also set the standards that must be met by local governments within their state to meet the needs that their citizens have, that do not apply to citizens of every state, so that the citizens may enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Local Governments should be tasked with the duties of providing for the needs of local citizens that do not apply to other citizens within the state or nation in which they are located.  These areas of control are actually much smaller, for all levels of government, than lawmakers past and present have interpreted their mandates to include.  Let's have some examples, shall we?

    Our first example is education.  Education is something that the citizens of every state in the nation needs.  No logic can be used to indicate that the children and adults living in Colorado don't have the same use for learning how to read and add that the children living in Tennessee have.  The alphabet is the same in all states, and combining two hydrogen molecules to one oxygen molecule results in water no matter where in the country you do it.  In our mobile society, pretty much no one is guaranteed to live our their entire lives and die within the borders of one state, so it's in the best interest of any citizen that they be able to move between the states at any time in their lives without being able to spot glaring differences within the education systems of those states.  That fact calls for a minimum standard to be instituted by the Federal Government which outlines what education must consist of for every citizen who is being educated within our borders.

States should take on the role of implementing standards that require each citizen in their state to understand those things that are specific to their state, such as the history of their state, and the laws pertaining to issues which only affect that state's citizens.  Local governments, as those most closely in contact with the citizens who need to be educated, should be tasked with finding a way to meet those standards set by Federal and State Governments by providing their citizens with all the different options that are available to meet the goal of providing education, and setting the parameters within which those goals must be met.  Ultimately, it is up to the individuals who are in need of that education, and their guardians, to choose the option that best fits their needs, and to meet the requirements of learning the information.

     Our next example is going to be natural disasters.  While the citizens of every state are vulnerable to natural disasters, the question of which ones and frequency of occurrence are rather State specific.  Florida doesn't have to worry too much about drought, while Nevada can pretty much relax about hurricanes.  The idea of every citizen in the country contributing money to maintain an agency that exists to respond to any natural disaster within the country is wasteful and foolish.  We've held the lease on the real estate that is the US long enough to have a pretty good idea about what problems may pop up in each region and state that will require some serious cleanup and rebuilding.identifying and preparing for the specific types of bad shit that may go down in a particular state is exactly what State and Local Governments should be doing with their time.  Trying to gather people, tools and supplies from all over the country to meet the disaster needs of one relatively small area is not a task that the Federal government has ever been very good at, and can never hope to be good at, no matter how much money they spend trying to be.  This is a responsibility best handed over to State Government along with the edict that they need to have some plan for dealing with it.  Once you take the Federal Government out of the equation, ordinary citizens from every state have proven that they are more than willing to support non government agencies such as the American Red Cross, who have figured out how to deal with this stuff, and who can come in and give aid to the States when they need it.

     At every level of government, there needs to be less of a sense of urgency to "fix" everything.  The fact that our elected representatives in government are commonly referred to as "Lawmakers" has seriously gone to some people's heads over the years.  Candidates running for reelection to government office are being judged on the number of laws that they tried to implement during their last term, rather than the quality of those laws or whether they did any good for anyone or not.  In our supposedly "free" society, we have to recognize and understand that our society changes rapidly right along with the people who form it.  None of us is exactly like anyone else, and the things that influence our ideas and behavior change so often that our "generations" separate not only parents from their children, but often children who are born to the same parents a mere decade apart.  What needs to happen is that a good hard look needs to be taken at all the laws that have been enacted by every government body, and some common sense needs to be applied in deciding whether those laws are necessary at all.

     Laws are necessary to ensure that each citizen within our nation has the same opportunity to exercise their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Without them, you'll always have some idiot who thinks that it is okay for them to do something that is going to interfere with another person's rights to live and be free and happy.  We will never get to a point with our society where no one needs to be told that they can't go out and kill another person simply because it makes them happy to do so.  Without a law prohibiting murder, there is a segment of every society that will go out and murder other members of the society just because they can.  The law acts as a deterrent for those who may be inclined to shit all over other people, but don't get excited enough about doing it that they are willing to suffer possible consequences in order to act on their inclinations.  What laws do not need to exist for is to make everyone the same when their differences don't get in the way of someone else living free and relatively happy.  Laws that make it illegal for someone to like something that other people don't, these are based on one person or group's ideal, and should not exist.  If a person wants to think or behave a certain way, and they aren't asking anyone else to do anything except leave them alone to think and behave that way, then that's pretty much the definition of liberty, now isn't it? 

     Overall, we need less government telling people what they should be thinking and doing, and more people getting to decide for themselves what fits in with their idea of what life, liberty, and happiness are.  And everyone needs to get a grip on the fact that they are only in control of their own lives, government is not a club to be used to make others follow the path that you have chosen for yourself.