Sadly, states misused their authority. Certain states claimed that it was within their power to sanction slavery. And so the laboratories of democracy became torture chambers of democracy, with majorities oppressing minorities.
The federal response to the slavery question was quick and right – President Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War restored for all time the founding promises of the Declaration of Independence. Despite the Civil War, however, the legacy of Jim Crow further eroded the moral authority of states’ rights. And the federal government, wielding the ethical imperatives of both racial equality, stepped in. States’ rights advocates were forever branded as bigoted Orval Faubus types, standing in the doorways of segregated schoolhouses.
And so the federal government took control of abortion policy. It took control of tax policy, blaming the states for “regressive” laissez-faire doctrine. It took control of education and health care. And states, eager for federal cash, largely acceded in the shift toward federal power.
Now states are surprised to find that their ability to resist federal directives has been all but extinguished. They are surprised that they are no longer able to set their own standards regarding social, economic, or criminal policy. They are surprised that through a combination of moral blindness and drooling greed, they surrendered their role in the constitutional system.
It is not too late. The first step toward the reinstitution of local government as a force in American life must begin with resistance to the total federalization of the economy. States can start by taking the moral high ground and refusing federal “stimulus” dollars.
If they do not, federal government will, once and for all, become a government of unlimited powers. And the laboratories of democracy will be closed down once and for all in the name of nationalized leftism.