Why States Powers Must Increase And Federal Power Must Decrease

I don't fly very much so when I do I'm like a kid. Flying amazes me. I recall a recent flight out of Seattle and as the plane turned I saw the thousands of cars like ants meandering through the forests.

That small moment looking at the thousands of cars taught me new lessons in Federalism. I began to think about it. Most of our states individually have populations vastly larger than our Federal government was 150 years ago. And so I began to wonder, isn't it an astonishing arrogance for federal representatives to think that our Federal Government must make so many decisions for so many.

There may have been past times where it was important for the Federal Government to right the wrongs of local governing systems. But the new and more grave danger now is that when the Federal government makes an error, it scales to 300 million people. Or really, it scales to 6 billion people worldwide. That is just too dangerous. We live in an age of the Internet, which increases our ability to communicate. When errors, injustices, or wrongs occur on a local level, they are published via YouTube to the world. This is the new instrument that allows us to influence each other towards greater Justice. Through the Internet much of the educational responsiblities of federal agencies become uneccesary. We inform each other with ideas through the Internet. We have states with large enough populations to take on the majority of the decisions now made by our Federal government.

Because of these things, it's now time to swing the pendulum back. To recreate a Federal government that is lean, that is small, and is focused on a very few tasks so it can do them well.

I recently saw a public debate where Senator Specter was shouted down by the crowd as he explained that he had to make fast decisions on the multitude of bills that are thousands of pages. It was surreal. In that moment, he made the case better than I ever could of why the Federal government no longer scales. We have a huge systemic problem. Our system of representation no longer scales, and Senator Specter and every other Congressman and Senator that cannot read through the vast number of Bills have just told the world that it no longer scales.

Except that the system really does scale beautifully. And that is the real power of Federalism. Governing responsiblities are shared at federal, state, local, family, and individual levels.

And for the sake of our own Federal Senators and Congressmen we need to remove almost all of their responsibilities and return those responsibilities to states,local, family, and individual levels and let them focus on the few that they actually should be doing!