Have liberals re-discovered federalism?

During the 20th century, political liberals have generally opposed federalism and devolution, preferring Washington, D.C. and the federal judiciary to impose liberal policies on the entire country, from abortion rights to environmental policy to gun control laws. That�s fine for them when liberals are in power. But what about when conservatives become firmly entrenched?

In a democracy, where 50 percent plus 1 takes home all the political marbles, there are bound to be people who strongly dislike political outcomes. In a nation as large as the United States, that means millions and millions of people won�t like the outcome.

There is a way around the disunity problem and it�s a solution the nation�s Founders devised. It�s called federalism � devolving political decision-making as close to voters as possible, to the states and local municipalities. It�s an old idea, but one that might be rejuvenated in the wake of this election.

Consider the big blue state, California. A majority of California voters favored John Kerry in this election and Al Gore in the last election. So are Californians condemned to suffer in Bush�s red America?

Not exactly. Consider the issue of embryonic stem cell research. President Bush is against federal support for the creation of new embryonic stem cell lines. The president�s position was attacked by Senator Kerry in the campaign. California voters, favoring Kerry�s position, worked around Bush�s ban on federal funding � by funding it themselves! Voters supported ponying up $3 billion for embryonic stem cell research.

Of course, this is just one example of many. I love federalism.

www.foxnews.com...

I agree that the extreme centralization of power in the Federal government goes completely against the original intentions of the founding fathers... if state governments had any real power, then the fact that Republicans hold a majority in both houses of Congress and control the Presidency would be nowhere near as terrible to Democrats.

Federal centralization caused the first civil war (although it was fought for a noble cause), and I fear that it may someday cause a second... so yes, I agree fully, put the power back into the hands of the states!



EDIT: Major applause to the private funders of the stem cell research projects you speak of... even though I'm usually fairly conservative, I beleive fully that the future of human medical technology lies within the stem cell.

[edit on 11/13/2004 by Odd]