America was founded as a Constitutional Republic, wherein our rights are deemed inherent, and that government’s role is in protecting said inalienable rights.
I’m also reminded that our original “states,” or 13 independent colonies, chartered the establishment of our Constitution in which the states would operate semi-independently and our federal government would perform limited, enumerated duties, and that those duties not specifically granted to the United States (our federal government) were the purview of the individual states.
The 10th Amendment states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
War authorization, naturalization, taxation, regulation of foreign and inter-state commerce, the holding of standing armies/navies, and the long since bastardized general welfare clause.
James Madison, in interpreting “general welfare” as it pertained to a bill allocating monies to promote cod fisheries, wrote this:
I, sir, have always conceived—I believe those who proposed the constitution conceived; it is still more fully known, and more material to observe, those who ratified the constitution conceived, that this is not an indefinite [federal] government deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers—but, a limited government tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms.
Madison and our other founders deemed our federal government as an apparatus to serve in a very limited capacity, only by those functions tightly enumerated in the Constitution.
America’s federal government, particularly since the onset of the “progressive era” at the beginning of the last century, has expanded well beyond their tightly enumerated federal functions into almost every aspect of our day to day lives: health care, housing, food, medicines, electricity, transportation…ad infinitum.
Today, the GOP grapples with trying to claw back some of the responsibilities that were to be the purview of the states. On cue, the Democrats and their media enablers are apoplectic. The problem with Republicans, for as long as I can remember, is that they can’t bring themselves to stand toe-to-toe with the camera and explain to the American people that they are not due a cornucopia of “free stuff” from the Feds. If their states wish to experiment with the idea of more “free stuff” to some and increased taxation to others, that should be strictly the purview of the state.
Medicaid saw a bum-rush increase in participation, particularly in Blue States, with the federal government co-subsidizing this expansion. Sanctuary state California saw fit to include illegal aliens on their Medicaid rolls, to the tune of $9 billion, with much of the funding coming from the federal government.
If California, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, and New Jersey want to expand their “safety nets,” they and they alone should foot the bill. This creates a true laboratory of democracy. Let blue states embrace socialism (if they choose) and pay for the privilege.
By enabling the federal government to continue to subsidize state choices, the people of said states are unfazed by the expense, while they laud their local, state representatives for the generous provision of “free stuff.”
Blue state citizens need to feel directly the impact of their electoral choices. Only when the people are steeped in the rumination of their own choices, will they come to the realization that “free stuff” isn’t free.
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.
