Posted by
Jason Cunningham on Thursday, July 26, 2007 3:09:56 AM
It was encouraging – exciting, even – to read that Rudy Giuliani is approaching many issues from a federalist perspective. Federalism – the idea that the federal government is to be small in scope and largely unintrusive, and that people should get to decide most issues for themselves at the state level – was the intention of the Founders, as anyone should be able to see from a reading of our Constitution; that great document ascribes a rather short list of duties to the federal government, and declares (in Amendment X) that the states have the right to decide everything else – even if it means each of the states deciding the same issue a different way. Such an approach allows for local and regional preferences to prevail, and prevents the foisting of overarching laws onto the nation when they’re unnecessary.
Federalist belief, as L.A. Times columnist Robert Brownstein notes, “leads Giuliani toward positions uncomfortable for both left and right.” This consequence is only logical: The moral decline that America has experienced in the last 50 years has led to a populace sharply-divided on weighty social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, with each side grinding it out for the upper hand. Of course, in any legitimate contest, at any point in history, everyone wants to win, and no one wants to lose. What many forget, however, is that democracy, by definition, means that in every situation there are going to be some people who don’t get their way. In the end, one position must win out over all others.
Modern America, on the other hand, has chosen a different course: gridlock. Each side would rather sweat it out for interminable periods of time rather than simply call for a vote and then grant kudos to the side chosen by the most people. The chief culprit in the rise of such a system, however, is not the rank-and-file, but activist judges and the unscrupulous lawyers who take advantage of them.
Consider abortion: Wherever you stand on the issue, I hope that you are rational enough to see that it was wrong for a mere nine justices to declare a “permanent” answer to the question and thus rob every American of having a full voice in the matter. The federalist approach – the approach that the Supreme Court should have taken – says, “Let’s throw the issue back to the people of this country, all the average and not-so-average joes – since the Constitution says nothing about abortion – and let them decide the issue for themselves.” This may mean that California would allow abortion and Maine would ban it, but that’s what democracy is all about: You and I can have different opinions on an issue, but whichever position has the most support is the one that wins out, fair and square – and by “support,” I don’t mean “whichever side can get an activist judge to rule in its favor,” but “whichever position has the most ‘yea’ votes among the general population.”
Operating in federalist fashion, I believe, is more likely to lead to a society that reflects the true will of its citizens, a society in which reasoned arguments – and not lobbyists – win out more often than not. The genuineness of Giuliani’s federalism, and whether he would indeed appoint “strict constructionist” judges, are different questions. But if he is sincere in his old-school (i.e., “Founder-like”) approach, then he is one of the few who truly understand democracy.