Federalism and Abortion

Key Idea. Now, I have a right to free speech. You’re aware of that right, right? You too have that right… Right. But wait; there’s more. Now it’s time to talk about the rights of states.

Abortion is a moot point – Also the best of all possible worlds. The Federal Government is no longer responsible for unborn life. If you want to get an abortion, nobody can stop you; just go where you can get it. If you want to live where there’s no abortion, you can do that. The President is not involved. The President has nothing to say about it. Much better than a national mandate either way. Unlike almost every Western society, there is not one size fits all with respect to unborn human life and to abortion. This States Rights and Federalism is what the Framers intended. And nobody is obligated to pay for anyone else’s desires. That’s also the American way. Do what you want; it’s there for you. MiniTruUSA.com

Back in the day, and I’m talking last Tuesday. Not really, but back well within living memory, we used to hear a lot about “States’ Rights.” We don’t hear that term said around here so much anymore. Along with the Congress giving up power (in this spot read the word “responsibility”) to the Executive Branch, States have been giving up power (“responsibility”) to the federal government. Well that means at the banquet table, the pizza pie has grown bigger, and the slice the big guy gets (read “President”) is bigger in a bigger pizza pie.

(We’ll have an article about the “Non Delegation Doctrine” soon.)

That means the checks and balances are out of balance and getting more out of balance.

That’s sort of a background. Here’s a bit more. You might think that when the Revolutionists on the American Continent got together, they wanted to make a country and have some states be part of it and then grow it, and everybody share all the same values and that’s how they’d get along. Not really. Most of these guys did not have that vision. All they wanted was a fair shake and to be left alone to take care of their town business and for some to make their fortunes.

Now, they knew that they needed laws, so they were first called colonies, and the law came from across the water. That was not going so well so they called these things “states” – like they were their own countries unto themselves! Well, this was not appreciated from across the water so they joined in some ideas and concepts and became “united states” – meaning they agreed on some important principles and that they would get together and gain their independence. Not only from England but also they’d be pretty much independent from each other. One of these agreements, for the most part was they did not like Big Government; they didn’t trust Big Government. They didn’t want to form a big old government. Government was there mainly as a container for the Department of War (in those days we didn’t have a Department of Defense – not until 1947!) and controlling interstate stuff like commerce. We also didn’t have an Education Department. In fact, when the Constitution was drawn up they had what they called “Direct Taxes,” which you might think meant the taxes the Federal Government was going to extract from people directly (all property and business was owned by people). Nope. Direct Tax was tax paid by the states to the Federal Government and the direct part was they were taxed on the people represented by Congress, so a larger state with more Free People would pay more to the Federal Government than one with fewer Free People. In fact, there is nothing in the original founding documents that the Free People give anything directly to the Federal Government; only the States themselves paid (huh, no federal Income Tax!).

The States Rights guys (all guys then) hardly wanted the Federal Government to do anything; the idea of Federalism came up and there were a bunch of Federalist Papers written (I think I remember 85 of them) written by three guys named “Populist” that way the authors were pretty much anonymous to the public. More on that in another article. Now, somewhat contradictory to how the name sounds, Federalism means that the Federal Government is not some over-ruling authority and then the State Governments are the lesser and subservient. No, they’re sort of equals, in that the Federal Gov has some explicit powers and the States get the rest, and any powers the States don’t suck up goes to the People, and the Representatives that are structured out are all directly elected by the people, all the Legislators and the President, and a bunch of the officials the President wants to do stuff he has to get advise and consent for, from the Senate. There’s more, but the key is Federal Government is limited and the rest goes to the States (this is also important in the Abortion Article).

US recently took a big step in regaining that vision, and we should keep it up until we rely on the federal government to do as little as possible for us to be as free as possible.