Federalist doesn't mean Federalism

I have been blogging about Federalism, the sharing of power between the States and central government and previously argued as State’s Rights by Southern Obstructionist, and feel compelled to explain it in every post. Why is that?  It’s because it sounds as if it were the polar opposite, in other words a policy using the power of central government. Alexander Hamilton, the primary author of the Federalist Papers, and who as the Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington’s administration pushed for central government powers in finance and customs’ duty collections and found his point of view formed into our country's first political party, again Federalist. So when I misapplied the term Federalism, I was called out on it by someone who knew better. I’m not the only one. Just this past Sunday after the service when speaking to a friend about the horror in Florida with seventeen students and teachers murdered by a deranged kid using an assault weapon with high capacity cartridges that I declared Federalism is what can save us as I thought about the stringent laws put into place in Connecticut after Sandy Hook, the greater massacre of even younger children and their teachers. But my friend agreed with me by saying, "yes Congress has got to do something."

The NRA's hold on Washington is a fact. Best to think and act locally and ignore our dysfunctional central government.

Another benefit of Federalism, the sharing of powers between States and Central Government invented by our forefathers when drafting the Constitution, is how Connecticut dealt with the Sandy Hook murder of children and teachers. The second amendment reads as follows:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. 

I see the word regulated here. The history of the National Rifle Association (NRA) started after our Civil War by those who observed a general and abject lack of education on the safe use of arms. Currently the NRA seems to have been taken over by the crazies, best exemplified by its President Wayne Lapierre, it originally tried to tame. The NRA's hold on Washington is a fact. The only solution against Washington with regard to gun laws is to think and act locally and ignore, as with so much, our dysfunctional central government.

And regionally as best exemplified by Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey sharing gun safety data because the NRA has been so effective at blocking any attempt of developing a national one in Washington. 

Federalism is what saves our Democracy from The Man Who Would Be King

Pogo’s “we have met the enemy and he is us” is the observation that urban Liberals will understand as theirs now that the meddlesome Washington they created under FDR does under Trump the contrary actions to their will they had previously done unto rural rubes.  Our forefather when drafting the Constitution invented Federalism, the sharing of powers between the States and the Central Government. Southern obstructionists called it States Rights. Now that the obstructionists have taken over Washington it is time for Progressives to use the very same argument for their local efforts. For example if California should decide to provide comprehensive health care and sanctuary protection for the immigrant population that fuels its economy then it should disentangle its funding from the central web that holds it back by reasserting the rights of States never ceded to the central government by the Constitution. But under this arrangement California can not inflict its progressive agenda on other States, such as Kansas for example, which resist it. This distributed power of the Constitution is a unique gift that saves our Democracy from the autocrat Donald Trump who otherwise is The Man Who Would Be King.