Federalism: The Next Victim

The attacks on Clarence Thomas are part of eradicating the last Constitutional firewall for freedom.

Years ago, an embittered columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune regurgitated the usual ‘progressive’ shibboleth that our nation’s framers were really advocates of big government. In this particular case, the notion that James Madison was really “contemptuous of states’ rights.”¹

The rank revisionism was nothing new. After all, before academia and their comrades in the media can recreate society in their collectivist image, they must first eradicate any history to the contrary.

Such fanaticism is rarely static and by the time Tucker Carlson lamented how open borders were changing American demographics, the same so-called journalist (now relegated to a ‘newsie’ nonprofit backed by left-wing foundations) was riding the censorship bandwagon, demanding the FNC host retract his “racist, evil and contemptible” comments.²

Fast forward to a more recent piece in the Wall Street Journal by Pulitzer Prize-winning academic Jack Rakove, titled, James Madison’s Critique of the Senate Still Holds.³

The learned professor asserts “How different would American politics have been if the large states had prevailed,” assuring us of what he describes as a Madisonian desire for the concentration of power in large urban areas, particularly in the US Senate. Why, it’s enough to make you think the ‘father of the Constitution’ was backing the National Popular Vote (NPV).

But, of course, it was precisely the consolidation of power that the framers feared.

In fact, equal representation for large and small states was not only something Madison “fought for tooth and nail,” but his enthusiasm was such that it became “the only permanent, unamendable [requiring unan­i­mous ap­proval by the states] part of the Constitution," according to Stephen Phillips, a professor of political science at Clemson University.⁴

To be sure, the Virginian was concerned about ‘local mischiefs,’ as were most Federalists at the time. Perhaps he was even disappointed that elements of ‘national’ government were subordinated to the interests of a ‘federal’ one.