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Like parched lips to the water fountain, insolvent states are lapping up the dollars coming from the federal government in the latest round of socialist thievery and inter-generational slavery. Rather than face the hard task of balancing their own budgets based on available tax revenue, they welcome the (supposedly) free money as a political lifeline. Unwilling to face reality, they embrace the federal fantasy such a stimulus of necessity creates.
The Constitution’s framers created a system whereby sovereign and independent states delegated some of their powers to a central, federal government who could secure the blessings of liberty and provide for the general welfare of all. Thomas Jefferson described this structure once in a letter to Robert J. Garnett:
The best general key for the solution of questions of power between our governments is the fact that ‘every foreign and federal power is given to the Federal Government, and to the States every power purely domestic.’ I recollect but one instance of control vested in the Federal over the State authorities in a matter purely domestic, which is that of metallic tenders. The Federal is, in truth, our foreign government, which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate States. (Thomas Jefferson, via Quoty)
Today, however, the tentacles of the federal government have a far greater and deeper reach into the affairs of its subservient state governments. In most cases, sovereignty has been replaced with dependency; assertion of power with groveling for assistance; exercise of delegated authority with fear of stepping on the federal government’s toes.
But in nearly every case, federal money is welcomed with open arms and visible relief. State leaders seem unwilling to recognize the simple fact that what the federal government pays for, it controls. Such control may start out slowly and with measured reticence, but nobody finances the operation of anything without ultimately having a say in how it is carried out.
From this we learn that in order to be sovereign, one must be self-sustaining. The ability to self-govern (acting instead of being acted upon) requires not being in bondage through slavery (financial or otherwise) to another party. Thus, by accepting federal money for internal projects and programs, states are further surrendering their sovereignty and eroding any sort of division between state and federal spheres of authority.
Just as a drug addict is dependent upon his supplier for the continual provision of resources he “needs”, so too do the states increase their addiction to easy money by accepting handouts from Uncle Sam. Both the supplier and the federal government know that once the addict is hooked, they’ll do anything demanded of them in order to get just one more fix they so desperately need.
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