No Easy Way

The states now favor centralization, not federalist choice, contrary to the Founders who thought the states might deprive the government of its legal authority. Michael Greve says the emasculation of the states was largely due to Constitutional changes that the Founders could not have foreseen, such as the great expansion of federal taxing and spending powers through the federal income tax with the 16th Amendment. The competition among states turned into a race for federal dollars.

According to Greve, at least campaigns for term limits, school vouchers, color blind civil rights laws, restrictions on political expenditures of trade unions, and abolition of bilingual education are alive and doing well in the states.

Decentralizing simply will calm things down. Nationalizing every subject creates too much national noise and much trouble in the country. But can we repeal the New Deal, the Great Society, and the pre-communism-fascism of Big Government? Or is federalist power to the states futile?

The liberals are nationalist in orientation, the Paleoconservatives are not (although economic nationalism may be a necessary exception). Yet there seems no easy way. Demographics and human nature, more than legal finagling will lead to change. The latest financial crash makes money scarce coming from the federal government or from any other place, and this may help the devolution.