Posted by
David C. Innes on Monday, July 27, 2009 10:08:12 AM
Harold Kildow writes: The sagebrush rebellion of some years ago is flickering back to life,
as the Tenth Amendment is being rediscovered in the face of the serious
ramp-up of the Democratic party's decades old assault on the
Constitution. Bob Dole's hapless candidacy against Bill Clinton in 1996
had as one its main slogans something like, "Return to the 10
th Amendment!" It fell so flat no one even heard it. It has taken
Obama's audacity of hope to reignite the
brush fire
that has been smoldering out West.
Rick Perry, governor of Texas and
one of the leading lights of the resurgent
conservative wing of the
Republican party, came out swinging on
Obama's
socialized health care boondoggle. Perry is willing to go to court
using the Tenth Amendment's guarantee of state sovereignty against the
imposition of any such program. He also suggests in this Star Telegram
piece,
"Perry Raises Possibility of State's Rights Showdown with White House over Health care that several other governors are also prepared to stand up against the federal leviathan on this issue.
Good
on 'em. It's late in the day to only just begin to bring our political
order back into line with our fundamental law, but certainly better
late than never. Governors and state legislatures have tremendous power
to wield against the central government--it is one of the fundamental
protections the Founders built into the constitution to prevent the
dangerous side road we took throughout the 20
th century in being talked into
discarding
the "antique" document our benighted forebears tried to saddle us with
and taking up with the modern "progressive" ideas of scientific
management
and rule by experts.
Anyone who thinks he's smarter than James Madison
along political science lines automatically signals with that very
thought his inferiority. And somewhere there is a whole raft of
anti-Federalists watching the encroachment on the States by the federal
government saying, "We told you so." Maybe someone in the Republican
party can suggest a new anti-Federalism as a way forward. We have a
decent start with this 10
th Amendment movement springing up.
-- Harold Kildow (Ph.D. Fordham University) is associate blogger at
Principalities and Powers.