[tpaine]

" The States once had powers that mattered, and now they have little. I think that is a shame. The States never intended to give this much power to the federal government and if they could have seen as clearly as the anti-federalists, they would never have ratified the Constitution we have." -abcdefg -


On this we do agree. I think power exercised by the governent should be as close to the individual as possible so that it can be effectively checked. The further power devolves from the individual the greater the threat to liberty. - laredo44 -

The 'power' you two are discussing is not vested permanantly to any of our levels of government. They can't trade it around, ie, the states cannot 'give' the feds power.
- It remains the peoples constitutional power, protected [supposedly] by our system of checks & balances.
-- All governments, fed/state/local, must not only obey the constitution, but they are charged with protecting it.
- Obviously, the system is in trouble.
One reason it's in trouble is because so few understand how, or why, its supposed to work, imo, as evidenced by some of the comments on this thread.
{sorry, forgot to flag abcdefg]

[Abcdefg]

The anti-federalists have been proven right on many points. The system is breaking down before our eyes.
Greed, envy, sloth and so on: the human failings. Someone once said that America is great as long as Americans are good. Otherwise every weakness will be exploited until we are, once again, not our own masters.