Rocking Leviathan

Speculating on how the central state will crumble is one of the few pleasures of the present age. How will the social-democratic mixed economy, inherently unstable, resolve its internal contradictions?

Will a catastrophic fiscal crisis immobilize Washington? Will a financial collapse cripple the Fed's money managers? Will a national tax revolt put the politicians out of business?

We can't rule any scenario out, but recent events suggest that, absent serious top-down reform, a reassertion of the federal principle will topple tyranny.

Ronald Reagan praised federalism to get elected, but centralized virtually every function of government. George Bush called for decentralization, and then signed a litany of usurpations. Even Bill Clinton praised federalism before trying to be Franklin D. Roosevelt the Second.

Yet there is virtually no American problem that can't be solved through freer markets, more secure private property, and local rights. The Leviathan state, like a parasite, lives only because nobody has figured out a way to throw it off.

The will is there. Calls for independence have spread from Eastern Europe to your hometown. The more people pay in taxes, the more they wonder where it all goes. The more they are forced to obey D.C. mandates, the more they inquire about their point.

Governor Pete Wilson of California has sued the central government for $370 million, which the feds have forced the state to spend on health care for illegal aliens. Voters are outraged at this spending, and increasingly see Washington, D.C., as the enemy.

Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona, and Texas are also suing the central government for the same reason. If only taxpayers in these states could sue bureaucrats directly. Imagine INS and HHS officials, to take just some of the gang, having to sell their lavish houses to pay the judgments.

The central government oppresses cities and states in myriad ways. Since the 1970s, nearly 200 central laws and regulations have required subsidiary levels of government to raise and spend money. The total cost to local taxpayers in the 1990s will exceed $200 billion. New York City alone will spend $4.6 billion.

The Clean Water Act, for example, forces cities to remove at least 30% of the organic material in waste water before treating it. But what happens when the water has virtually no such component? Anchorage, Alaska, asked the Environmental Protection Agency what to do. The EPA ordered the city to comply.

To do so, Anchorage had to ask two fish-processing plants to dump 5,000 pounds of blood and guts into the water, which the city then removed. The EPA is happy.

In Columbus, Ohio, the city spends thousands of dollars to test for 43 pesticides that have never appeared in its water. The overall cost of complying with such mandates was $685 per Columbus household last year. The Motor-Votor Act, actually designed to register bums rather than drivers, costs California $26 million a year.

The costs imposed by the central state are incalculable, but here is some of what state and local governments have had to spend so far, with the D.C. gun held to their heads: Clean Water Act: $29.3 billion; Safe Drinking Water Act: $8.6 billion; Americans With Disabilities Act: $2.1 billion; Asbestos Abatement Regulations: $747 million; Lead-Based Paint Abatement: $1.6 billion; and Clean Air Act: $3.6 billion.

The outrage has caused even Congress to listen. Yet the most conservative proposal seeks only to have the central government pick up the tab. Not a single bill advocates cutting back the mandates, let alone the constitutional solution of abolishing them, and allowing the states to manage their own affairs.

Even worse is the D.C. gun grab. To be on the safe side, Santa Rosa County in Florida created a militia and made every man, woman, and child a member (complete with a membership card). That way, everyone has added protection under the Second Amendment. Even Janet "The Hitwoman" Reno might now think twice about sending her ranks into Santa Rosa County.

For many Americans, the anti-gun Brady law has been the last straw. Sheriffs in the South and the West are simply refusing to enforce it. Not only is it expensive and invasive, it is clearly unconstitutional. And it runs counter to every principle of freedom and federalism.

As Sheriff Jay Printz of Ravalli County, Montana, told a horrified New York Times reporter: "We like our guns in Montana. It's not unusual for a person to have 15 guns, or more."

Ravalli's protest was heard in court by one of the few good federal judges, Charles C. Lovell, who struck down a portion of the Brady law. He might have based his ruling on the Second Amendment. Instead, he rediscovered a relic called the Tenth Amendment.

Few Americans even remember that part of the Constitution. Those who do often deride and dismiss it, as Robert Bork has. Yet it may be the most important of all the Bill of Rights. In plain words, the Founders sought to chain down the central government: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The Framers saw the Tenth Amendment as a core principle of the American republic. As the final word of the original Constitution, and the last amendment in the Bill of Rights, it sought to guard against what Thomas Jefferson decried as "consolidation," and it emphasized that our republic is a compact among the states.

In Federalist No. 39, James Madison wrote "Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution, will, if established, be a federal, and not a national Constitution."

The powers of the central government are "few and defined," Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45, whereas the powers of the states are "numerous and indefinite," extending "to all the objects" which "concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people."

Even the consolidationist Alexander Hamilton admitted in Federalist No. 32 that the States "would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not ... exclusively delegated to the United States."

The Founders understood that decentralization is not only a bulwark against despotism, it is a central aspect of liberty itself.

We have come so far from this ideal that we ought never to refer to the government as "federal." For the central government regards the states as mere subdivisions of its empire, the better to rob the people of their liberty and property.

The Tenth Amendment came under attack as early as 1828, when special interests swindled the people with the protective tariff. Yet even after the aggressive War Between the States, the crimes of Reconstruction, and the disputed ratification of the 14th amendment in 1867, the legal core of state's rights remained intact.

In the Progressive Era, however, state's rights took four heavy blows in just seven years: the income tax, the direct election of Senators, alcohol prohibition, and forced universal suffrage (the 16th through 19th amendments). The New Deal and the mistaken judicial doctrine of "incorporation" then paved the way for the omnipotent government of Hillary's dream.

Trampling on the liberties once protected by federalism is the daily business of the executive branch, the Supreme Court, and the Congress. They socialize labor markets, impose vicious taxes and business regulations, crush communities, and heist human land for the Furbish lousewort, the Delhi sand fly, and other privileged species.

Every state and local decision is subject to a centralized veto. Federal judges tell county courthouses they cannot display the 10 commandments. They declare state holidays illegal. They regulate the manner of speech in private businesses.

The Justice Department tells Wedowee, Alabama, to fire its high-school principal. It tells Wayne, Indiana, to fund girls' sports. And it tells Rockland County, New York, to repeal its recycling laws.

That's why Judge Lovell's ruling is so important: it begins to roll back consolidated government. And it's why we should expect a massive push to get the ruling reversed. But as much as the disarmament lobby may scream, the judge's ruling is, if anything, too moderate, given that a rotten little city wedged between Maryland and Virginia rules and ruins a great nation.

If history is our guide, the situation cannot last. Already, D.C. denizens are grabbing their carved mahogany desks and asking, "What's that rumbling?" May we give them the answer they deserve, and plenty of it.