EMPOWERING THE PEOPLE tHROUGH FEDERALISM

Putting the people back in the driver seat

the best way to empower the people is to let the people make the decisions.

After all, what is power if not the ability to make the decisions? If you work for someone, your boss has power over you because your boss makes the decisions. As we grew up our parents or guardians made decisions for us because they had power over us. Therefore, if we want to transfer power back to the people, the people should be making the decisions as often as possible.

Some might argue that we already do make the decisions through our voting process. We vote for someone to “represent our interests” and that person or persons make the decisions on our behalf. But that could not be further from the truth as oftentimes, our politicians govern based on what they think is best, not necessarily what the will of their constituents are.

To be clear and up front, this is not a plea to let the individual person have a say in how our military is ran or how a nuclear power reactor is built or be responsible for paving the roads, some decisions simply should not be left up to the individual. However, there are plenty of decisions our government, comprised of elected politicians and unelected bureaucrats, make on our behalf that can and should be left up to the individual.

Power is the ability to make the decisions

Therefore we must adopt the mindset that power is the ability to make the decisions and the individual person must make the decision as often as possible, within reason and logic of course.

If an individual cannot make a decision, or should not for that matter, then that decision should fall to the appropriate level of government, such as the local level, state level or federal level. However, if our government or our politicians are taxing us so they can make decisions on our behalf, decisions that we can make on the individual level, then we do not have the power, plain and simple. Remember, power is the ability to make the decisions.

federalism 101

Our federal government is in the business of having extreme, central authority and overstepping the authority of our state governments, our local governments and even the people. Why is our federal government responsible for welfare? Why can’t the states handle their own welfare programs alone? Or better yet, why couldn’t the individual make a charitable contribution to help those in need within one’s local community? How empowering would that make someone feel if a person knew his or her willful act and dollars directly went to someone in need?

Our country is technically a combination of individual sovereign states, not one, singular country. When our country was founded, the states came together and created the federal government (central body of government) as documented in our Constitution. Our federal government was designed, from the very beginning of our nation’s founding do very little, to have few and defined powers, such as regulating interstate commerce or raising money to fund an Army and a Navy, and a few other things as documented in Article One, Section Eight, leaving everything else to the states and to the people as documented in the 10th Amendment.

Our founding fathers designed our country like this for a reason, because they knew the dangers of excessive central authority.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

-James Madison

Excessive central authority is dangerous for many reasons because as centralized authority grows, the people’s ability to be free, empowered, and prosperous declines. Our founding fathers knew this which is why they created a federal government with few and defined powers.

For a more detailed explanation on why excessive central authority is dangerous, click here to read an article about this topic.

Furthermore, governments work best and the people are most empowered when decisions are made as close to home as possible for three reasons.

 

First, it is easier for one’s voice to be heard on a local level, than a state or federal level, for example, it is easier to schedule a meeting with one’s local city council representative, then it is one’s Congressional representative, or even the President of the United States.

 

Second, if money (taxes) stay as close to home as possible, it is easier for the people to ensure their government is not wasting their money or giving their money to people who do not need it.

 

Third, it is easier to live amongst people who share your values if most decisions are made on the local level. Decisions made on the state level or the federal level, impact all people of a state or the entire country, which is why few decisions should be made on the state-level of government, and even fewer decisions, for the federal government.

[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore . . . never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.

-Thomas Jefferson

For these reasons, We The People Coalition advocate for federalism as a means to transfer power back to the people.