Resurrect The Republic

[dairygirl4u2c]

"incapable of doing it" is my standard too. if states do not make rape laws, then the feds should step in, if they have constitutional power. i know the USSC had before repealed such a fed rape law, as it was before the later amendemnts
you prob mean more than i do, in so far as incaple of doing it means they simply can't at all, not that they won't or whatever.

btw, there's much interpretation to the contution. two main points that allow flexibility in my mind in interpreting. the first and primary is that the states are represented when they are making a law or acting through their representative in fed gov. second, the constituion is not an encylcopedia, and if you see something, like "commerce" for example, i don't think you shold expect clear delineations of what that means. so, tehse are reasons i'd defer to fed power before getting gung ho abotu repealing a law that the country decided to make.
of course, whether somethings constitional or not, and whether they should do it or not is two different things as i'm sure you know. but it's worth mentioning.

Edited October 2, 2007 by dairygirl4u2c

[dairygirl4u2c]

maybe i should change my words, cause incapable means more like what it does to you than it does to me.
i don't think the defintion of subsidiarity includes "incapable" it's more vague, i think.

maybe i shouldn't even try to squeeze subsidiarity to fit my outlook. maybe i should just say there are exceptions to it.

Edited October 2, 2007 by dairygirl4u2c

[dairygirl4u2c]

i'm sure the catho church wouldn't be for allow states rights in abortion. just an example to show that there may be times fed power is warranted.
whether it's constitiuoanal again is a diff question.

[Aloysius]

the word I used was "competant", I think it's an accurate word. when a state proves itself incompetant to do something, then the federal government should pressure them into doing it or enforce it themselves if absolutely necessary.

subsidarity can apply all the way down to the lowest levels, and I like to bring it down to the lowest to really prove points. the family is ordinarily competant at governing itself; disciplining and teaching the children and such. if a family proves itself incompetant (the standards are debateable, Germany thinks you're incompetant if you simply disagree with the national governrment, that's wrong) to educate its children, or incompetant at raising them by abusing them, then the local government should step in and do something about it; whenever possible, that something should be an attempt to re-establish the good order whereby the family is able to competantly govern itself. in a worst case scenaria, the government must usurp the authority of the parental governors; but even then, only so that they can send the children to another family which is competant. The state never takes over the role, the state never becomes the family.

same with the federal government. there are means to intervene when states are incompetant at doing things (standards are debateable, current federal idealogy considers any state who wouldn't have its drinking age at 21 incompetant at dealing with alcohol, that's wrong) but that doesn't mean that the federal government should ever assume the role of a state government (at least not permanently, in extreme cases it can do so temporarily to restore moral order, like a state removing a child from a family only to re-establish it in another family, or re-establish the original family if necessary)

[Aloysius]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1396790' date='Oct 2 2007, 08:46 PM']i'm sure the catho church wouldn't be for allow states rights in abortion. just an example to show that there may be times fed power is warranted.
whether it's constitiuoanal again is a diff question.[/quote]
A Catholic who believed in the Constitution could legitimately hold that every state ought to be given the chance to illegalize abortion, and that every state ought to illegalize abortion. If a state proved incompetant at illegalizing abortion, then the federal government would become the competant authority to restore moral order in that state, but the ideal situation would have the states all having their own anti-murder law and their own anti-abortion law.

Personally, that's what I would support; I would also support a federal ban on it being a pragmatist and realizing the current structure of our government and the fact that it would be necessary to make it a nation-wide ban to restore order in the few states (and there are not many, they're just the more densely populated ones) who would refuse to illegalize abortion.

[dairygirl4u2c]

i think the child rearing incapability, abuse, is troubling.
it's similar to the idea that abortion is okay in the states. it just can't be allowed and must be intervened.
if you take subsidiary as a straight and narrow rule, to its logical conclusion, then tehse things even child rearing cannot be infringed upon.
if you look at minimum wage etc as similar to child rearing, then it's not so bad i'm sure.
in my scenario, i wouldn't say the feds should intervene when they think people shouldn't like the dallas cowboys. a little far fetched, but my point is that there is much rightful discretion.
if we disagree with what is essential things, then that's that.

Edited October 3, 2007 by dairygirl4u2c

[Aloysius]

I'm not sure you understood my post. I laid out how and why a larger government should interfere in a matter normally dealt with at a lower level. when that lower level is incompetant to establish moral order, then the larger government interferes. but that doesn't mean the larger government takes permanent control over that particular issue in every lower government.

if New York fails to illegalize abortion, but every other state does, then the Federal Government needs to interfere with New York matters in order to establish moral order.

if a family fails to educate their children, but every other family educates them well, then the local or State Government needs to interfere with that one family and leave the other families alone. (I'm not saying not to offer public education, don't want to get into that whole debate, I'm just dealing with if/when a family decides not to choose that public education)

if a local government fails to protect the rights of those who work in its territory and they are not receiving adequat pay, then the state government should interfere. but not with a state-wide minimum wage (it's outside of the competancy of any larger government to deal with everyone in such broad terms); but by re-establishing order in that one locality by dealing with the unions and the managements and stuff... but only if the local government (which in this system would have much more power than it does now) fails to do so.

so the issue of minimum wage is entirely transformed. it's not "should the Federal government issue a minimum wage or leave it alone?"... it's "if a locality has poor wage conditions, it should be dealt with by its unions/magagements first, next (if they are incompetant to solve the problem) by its local government, next (if the local government is incompetant to solve that problem) by the state government, next (if the state cannot solve that problem) by the federal government. Nowhere in that process does a state government say "We're going to make a generalized law for every county" or does a federal government say "we're going to make a generalized law for every state" or, God forbid, does an international government say "we're going to make a generalized law for every nation"... they simply lose competancy to deal with the issue.

this would authorize local governments to issue minimum wages, of course. and states would have the competancy to deal directly with businesses who act all over their state, and the federal government the competancy to deal with nation-wide and international companies. if a state thought that a state-wide company was being unfair to one of its counties, that's a matter for the state to resolve.

by competancy, I do not mean capability. competancy involves the ability to act and the proper act; if something has the capability to act correctly but does not actually act, it is incompetant.

[Socrates]

[quote name='son_of_angels' post='1396435' date='Oct 2 2007, 12:34 AM']O good grief!

If I had a nickel for everytime a reportedly Catholic politician called for a return to the Constitution, I would be a rich man. Yet Constitutionalism isn't what this country needs at the moment, nor a wrong-headed drive to lessen the federal government. Either of these views is both counter-productive and irresponsible. They are counter-productive, because it is through the strength of the Presidency, not the impotency of Congress that this nation has advanced further than ever towards Catholic social ideals, and it is, in fact, the President alone who possesses the strength of office to be a real model of social behaviour for the country. A lessening in his power would only result in power be distributed to the Washington bureaucrats who really do not need any encouragement from us to continue coddling their constituents. It is irresponsible because the United States, contrary to popular belief, is an empire. We behave like an empire, we impose like an empire, we are economically united like an empire, and we are advancing like an empire. We have no choice in the matter except to dissolve the "Republic" (which itself is an imperial term, as originally we were not one republic but 13 republics in one federation), or to accept the mantle of empire which we chose for ourselves beginning with Thomas Jefferson and culminating in the Empire's inauguration in Abraham Lincoln.
One lesson that all Empires must learn is that there is no choice but to advance. Should the nation ever stop growing in power and influence, it becomes weak at the foundations and collapses. Even so, the Constitution, and a kind of reductionist strategy towards its "restoration" is not what is needed. Instead we need real constitutional reform, the kind of reform that can encourage and mandate new situations in our present crisis. For example, there is currently no judicial oversight of the President, which would be solved if the Senate were made the Supreme Court. The Congress does not even really operate as a deliberative body when in plenary session, which would be solved by an appointed Senate taking the lead on the legislative process. Moreover, the popularity of the President is affecting elections in the legislative branch, which in turn makes it impossible to tell who actually is qualified for the job and who just seems better than the current president. This would of course be solved if the President were appointed by a deliberative process by the few, therefore having less public mandate, rather than our current deluded system of popular election.

The Constitution, moreover, is gravely flawed by its reliance on out-moded and unfounded Enlightenment philosophy, which could not effectively imagine government and the Church having a substantial relationship. This was commented on by Popes beginning with Leo XIII.[/quote]


[quote name='son_of_angels' post='1396482' date='Oct 2 2007, 08:21 AM']The problem is, that the principle of subsidiarity really should only be applied that already assumes that the highest level of government has the potential to exercise full authority when needed. For example, subsidiarity would become unjust if, instead of the federal government outlawing abortion, it used subsidiarity to blame the states who lack the political wherewithal to do so. Necessity makes the higher powers act.
Likewise, when the Holy Roman Empire was forming to unite Europe and defeat Islam, plenary power was always given to the Emperor, because no one else could accomplish nor hold together what he was trying to accomplish. As for the Civil War, as a Southerner I certainly have sympathies for the Southern cause, but our (Southern) grievance in that case could be justified not because we had the intrinsic right to act on our own authority, but because the Constitution and state governments seemed to grant that right. It was a matter of law not of natural rights.

I will go more into Leo XIII's position later, if time allows.[/quote]
I seems you are essentially arguing for a type of fascism (and those familiar with me will know that I am not a liberal who casually uses the word "fascist" to refer to whoever disagrees with me).

The problem in modern American government (and most other modern governments) is not too little federal government power, but too much. The federal government has grown rapidly in both size and power over the past 150 or so years. And this has done nothing to make it more virtuous, but rather more corrupt and bloated.

While the U.S. may have in practice become an empire, this says nothing about whether an empire is an ideal system. Roman imperialism went hand-in-hand with corruption, and its eventual collapse under the weight of its own over-expansion, as have most empires through history.

I am a strong believer in local autonomy and things being decided at the local level where possible.
That is subsidiarity - putting the local first, not relying on federal government to dictate every decision.

You claim strong central government is morally necessary (using an example of outlawing abortion), but this is not how it works in practice. It was in fact a violation of federalism and states' rights that brought us such judicial monstrosities as Roe v. Wade, which made abortion-on-demand the law of the land, ruling that individual states could not restrict abortion.
This is the same mentality found in Federal Court decisions banning the Ten Commandments from state courtrooms, and which some liberals now want to use to declare homosexual "marriage" a "constitutional right" which cannot be banned by states.

An all-powerful central government is a dangerous two-edged sword, and more often leads to godless tyranny than just and moral rule. It should be kept in check, not given more power, in the hope that it will somehow act for the good.
I think practically, we will sooner have anti-abortion laws, etc. in individual states than in the federal government.
Federalism and states' rights will allow for more moral government in states that choose it. Why should the people of, say, South Carolina, be ruled by the opinion of the politically correct in New York and California?

[SarahB]

[quote name='Socrates' post='1396930' date='Oct 2 2007, 11:39 PM']I think practically, we will sooner have anti-abortion laws, etc. in individual states than in the federal government.
Federalism and states' rights will allow for more moral government in states that choose it. Why should the people of, say, South Carolina, be ruled by the opinion of the politically correct in New York and California?[/quote]


For real. I certaintly don't want to be held to decisions made by the 9th Cicrus Court(And yes, that was intentional).

[dairygirl4u2c]

i wasn't very clear and i think that caused confusion. bottomline. subsidiary is good. whether incompetent should be included in thedefinition of subsidiary or as exceptions to it, i think is an interesting theretical debate.
as to incompetency. i think a state that doesn't have a minimum wage is incompetent, and i think feds can do something without overreaching or having probs. you think and i would agree a state that doesn't have abortion laws is incompetent. you disagree that a state without wages is incompetent. we both agree with the theory of incompetency. so it's a metter of deciding what is essetnial such that if a state is incompetent, the feds can/should intervene.

[Aloysius]

"you disagree that a state without wages is incompetent."

not necessarily. depends on the local governments of that state, and the situation of that state. if people are being paid sub-standard wages, and the unions are unable to resolve it, and the local government isn't stepping in, and the state government isn't stepping in, then maybe the fed government can step in. not by making a nation-wide minimum wage, but by dealing with that particular state.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='Socrates' post='1396930' date='Oct 2 2007, 10:39 PM']I seems you are essentially arguing for a type of fascism (and those familiar with me will know that I am not a liberal who casually uses the word "fascist" to refer to whoever disagrees with me).

The problem in modern American government (and most other modern governments) is not too little federal government power, but too much. The federal government has grown rapidly in both size and power over the past 150 or so years. And this has done nothing to make it more virtuous, but rather more corrupt and bloated.

While the U.S. may have in practice become an empire, this says nothing about whether an empire is an ideal system. Roman imperialism went hand-in-hand with corruption, and its eventual collapse under the weight of its own over-expansion, as have most empires through history.

I am a strong believer in local autonomy and things being decided at the local level where possible.
That is subsidiarity - putting the local first, not relying on federal government to dictate every decision.

You claim strong central government is morally necessary (using an example of outlawing abortion), but this is not how it works in practice. It was in fact a violation of federalism and states' rights that brought us such judicial monstrosities as Roe v. Wade, which made abortion-on-demand the law of the land, ruling that individual states could not restrict abortion.
This is the same mentality found in Federal Court decisions banning the Ten Commandments from state courtrooms, and which some liberals now want to use to declare homosexual "marriage" a "constitutional right" which cannot be banned by states.

An all-powerful central government is a dangerous two-edged sword, and more often leads to godless tyranny than just and moral rule. It should be kept in check, not given more power, in the hope that it will somehow act for the good.
I think practically, we will sooner have anti-abortion laws, etc. in individual states than in the federal government.
Federalism and states' rights will allow for more moral government in states that choose it. Why should the people of, say, South Carolina, be ruled by the opinion of the politically correct in New York and California?[/quote]
This has been the debate in the US since the Constitution was adopted, and which of course had its ultimate expression in the Civil War, in which the matter was decided.

An "all-powerful central government" is morally neutral. Government authority can be used for good, or for evil. It is men, of course, who as the agents of that central government, act in morally good or morally evil ways.

From a pragmatic perspective, it would have been better for the Supreme Court to allow the political debate regarding abortion on demand to continue. However, it acted in accordance with its role as set out in the Constitution. As for the people in SC being ruled by the opinion of those in NY and CA, that's called "Democracy."

[kenrockthefirst]

[url="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071004/ap_on_re_us/bush_congress_ap_poll"]
Approval of Bush, Congress hits new low
[/url]
Personally, I'd be happier if we could just revert to a "village in the woods" type governance. At least in our local "town hall" meetings, I can actually have some influence, and our representatives actually respond to the "people."

[Aloysius]

according to Catholic Social Justice, powerful centralized power over local issues is, in fact, immoral. why? because it is contrary to the dignity of man. a man should not be ruled over in laws regarding his everyday life by an invisible entity that is not clearly present to him. man ought to be on a more level playing field with those who govern over him (extrapolating a theme from Rerum Novarum about how the classes need not be abolished, just brought closer together in terms of accessibility).

a man ought to be able to go complain to his town council about matters which are of importane, because a man ought to have the dignity to have a say in matters of importance in his locality.

a federal government should not be formed to govern over individuals; a federal government ought to govern over STATES, and states ought to govern over local governments, and then local governments ought to govern over individuals. When you cut out the two middle men in that formula, you act contrary to Social Justice, Subsidarity, and the dignity of man. Why? Because no man or family really has a chance of dealing with the Federal Government. A state has a chance of dealing with the federal government on an even playing field; and a local government has a chance of dealing with a state government on an even playing field, and an individual has a chance of dealing with a local government on an even playing field...

but interactions between the federal government and individuals starts to become inherently immoral (when it is not in the federal government's proper competancy to restore moral order when all more local governments have failed) because the federal government is the bully, it has all the power, the individual has less than no power, completely subject. what's he going to do? go vote for a third party candidate? wow, a lot of good that'll do him if the Federal Government decides it wants his land or something.

no, centralized power over local issues is not morally neutral, it's morally evil by nature. large and distant governments have no right to claim authority over smaller local matters; just as international bodies like the UN have no right to interfere with national sovereignty. It's Social Justice, it's Subsidarity, and our current model of strong-handed big federal central government breaks it.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='kenrockthefirst' post='1397465' date='Oct 4 2007, 01:44 PM'][url="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071004/ap_on_re_us/bush_congress_ap_poll"]
Approval of Bush, Congress hits new low
[/url]
Personally, I'd be happier if we could just revert to a "village in the woods" type governance. At least in our local "town hall" meetings, I can actually have some influence, and our representatives actually respond to the "people."[/quote]
precisely the point of the principal of subsidarity: the dignity of man is exalted, he has a real substantial influence in his local community that he does not have in large-scale abstractions of nation-states and the like.

now, subsidarity can work with non-democratic governments as well, and it is still more in keeping with man's dignity because, instead of the town hall ability to vote people out of office and be heard in your local community democratic idea, any king over a locality must live as a neighbor to those people... if he wrongs them greatly he has to live next to that mess; whereas a king over a large nation-state or an emporer, if he were to wrong a locality with some attempt at micromanaging that place, would not have to live with it.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1397467' date='Oct 4 2007, 11:45 AM']according to Catholic Social Justice, powerful centralized power over local issues is, in fact, immoral. why? because it is contrary to the dignity of man. a man should not be ruled over in laws regarding his everyday life by an invisible entity that is not clearly present to him. man ought to be on a more level playing field with those who govern over him (extrapolating a theme from Rerum Novarum about how the classes need not be abolished, just brought closer together in terms of accessibility).

a man ought to be able to go complain to his town council about matters which are of importane, because a man ought to have the dignity to have a say in matters of importance in his locality.[/quote]
Absolutely. See my post on this very matter.

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1397467' date='Oct 4 2007, 11:45 AM']a federal government should not be formed to govern over individuals; a federal government ought to govern over STATES, and states ought to govern over local governments, and then local governments ought to govern over individuals. When you cut out the two middle men in that formula, you act contrary to Social Justice, Subsidarity, and the dignity of man. Why? Because no man or family really has a chance of dealing with the Federal Government. A state has a chance of dealing with the federal government on an even playing field; and a local government has a chance of dealing with a state government on an even playing field, and an individual has a chance of dealing with a local government on an even playing field...

but interactions between the federal government and individuals starts to become inherently immoral (when it is not in the federal government's proper competancy to restore moral order when all more local governments have failed) because the federal government is the bully, it has all the power, the individual has less than no power, completely subject. what's he going to do? go vote for a third party candidate? wow, a lot of good that'll do him if the Federal Government decides it wants his land or something.

no, centralized power over local issues is not morally neutral, it's morally evil by nature. large and distant governments have no right to claim authority over smaller local matters; just as international bodies like the UN have no right to interfere with national sovereignty. It's Social Justice, it's Subsidarity, and our current model of strong-handed big federal central government breaks it.[/quote]
One word: desegregation. There's no way that the Southern states would have desegregated their schools voluntarily without the imposition from the Federal Government. It's the Federal Government's job to secure our individual rights - not necessarily govern, but make sure that it gets done - as set forth in the Bill of Rights and, in this case, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1397471' date='Oct 4 2007, 11:49 AM']precisely the point of the principal of subsidarity: the dignity of man is exalted, he has a real substantial influence in his local community that he does not have in large-scale abstractions of nation-states and the like.

now, subsidarity can work with non-democratic governments as well, and it is still more in keeping with man's dignity because, instead of the town hall ability to vote people out of office and be heard in your local community democratic idea, any king over a locality must live as a neighbor to those people... if he wrongs them greatly he has to live next to that mess; whereas a king over a large nation-state or an emporer, if he were to wrong a locality with some attempt at micromanaging that place, would not have to live with it.[/quote]
Count me in.

[Aloysius]

[quote]One word: desegregation. There's no way that the Southern states would have desegregated their schools voluntarily without the imposition from the Federal Government. It's the Federal Government's job to secure our individual rights - not necessarily govern, but make sure that it gets done - as set forth in the Bill of Rights and, in this case, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.[/quote]

See my post about what happens when a local government becomes incompetant, how the larger government becomes the competant authority to restore the moral order. That doesn't mean the Federal Government making widespread laws over all states for individuals, and that doesn't mean the federal government taking over the proper role of that state, that means interfering temporarily in the states which are incompetant in order to restore the moral order.

That could be seen as a justification for the North's agression in the Civil War. However, the Federal Government did not plan to restore states rights once moral order was restored, the Federal Government was attempting to increase its power over all the states permanently.

[Socrates]

[quote name='kenrockthefirst' post='1397441' date='Oct 4 2007, 11:13 AM']This has been the debate in the US since the Constitution was adopted, and which of course had its ultimate expression in the Civil War, in which the matter was decided.[/quote]
Something being "decided" by force of arms does not determine whether it is the right or just thing (unless you want to have a philosophy of "might-makes-right"), nor does it determine that ever-increasing central federal government power must be the path of the future. I would say the end of slavery was the only good to come out of that war, whose outcome overall has been detrimental to the Republic.
Actually, all the war decided was that the states had no right to secceed from the Union, even though this right was recognized by many before as being implied by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, including Lincoln himself prior to the war (Lincoln called this a "sacred right" in an 1848 speech).

The path taken by the country since Lincoln is one contrary to that invisioned by the founders, who were divided between the Federalists, who wanted a central government held in check by the states, and the Republicans, who wanted very little central government power at all over the individual states.

Jefferson and Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions declared that individual states could in fact nullify federal laws.

The principle of subsidiarity and states' rights is formulated in the (much neglected) Tenth Amendment:[quote][b]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. [/b][/quote]
The Tenth Amendment has been totally disregarded by many subsequent judicial rulings.

[quote]An "all-powerful central government" is morally neutral. Government authority can be used for good, or for evil. It is men, of course, who as the agents of that central government, act in morally good or morally evil ways.[/quote]
I called it a "dangerous two-edged sword" in a prior post. The problem is that as long as government is by fallen sinful men, and especially in an age which rejects much of the Christian ethos, the tendency is too strong for it to do evil. Since power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the safest thing is to limit the power of central government so that it can do the least damage.
If a state or local government is evil or corrupt, it can only do so much damage, however if a powerful central government is rotten, the damage is far more widespread.
Those who (like "Son of Angels") want to expand the powers of the federal government in the belief that it will allow it do more good, are extremely naive in their thinking.

[quote]From a pragmatic perspective, it would have been better for the Supreme Court to allow the political debate regarding abortion on demand to continue. However, it acted in accordance with its role as set out in the Constitution.[/quote]
Actually the SCOTUS acted completely against the Constitution in Roe v. Wade, contradiciting the Tenth Amendment, and using as an excuse a completely bogus "implied" "right to privacy" nowhere actually stated in the Constitution.
The proper role of the SCOTUS is to [i]interpret[/i] the law as found in the Constitution, not change the meaning to something entirely different, and in effect legislate from the bench as in Roe v. Wade.

[quote]As for the people in SC being ruled by the opinion of those in NY and CA, that's called "Democracy."[/quote]
I do not worship this modern idol of "Democracy," and neither in fact did the American founding fathers. The word "Democracy" is nowhere found in our country's founding documents, and a number of the founders wrote rather vehemently against democracy.
America was concieved as a representative republic, not as a direct democracy.

States' rights and limited central government is both more in accord with the intention of America's founders AND with Church social teaching of subsidiarity.

Edited October 5, 2007 by Socrates

[son_of_angels]

And yet how can a local government, so close to the people, so used to pandering to the people's whims (believe me, I am from the South, I've seen how "just" local government can be), ever be competent in the eyes of the national government to exercise authority. As I said above, I am for subsidiarity, but subsidiarity, to really be a matter of competency, should belong to people who are NOT elected locally. For example, I would be very much in favor of giving as much authority as needed to the "state" governments (although I would rather us not use these federal terms, and call them provinces instead), and completely trust them to handle local affairs, so long as the governors were appointed by the president, and the mayors appointed by the governors, etc. for life.

You see, the states are dependent on the federal government nowadays. Just consider the drinking age law. The 21 year old limit is a state law, not a federal law, but because the federal government threatened, if every state did not enact the 21 year old drinking age limit, they would cut off funds to their highway departments, each state has folded to the federal government's wish. Now, this works, and indeed most of federal-state relations work, because a federal government which acts sovereignly on behalf of the whole nation intrinsically creates a great deal of power which belongs to the federal government. That power is responsibility for the conduct of the whole nation, like it or not. If the power is not used, then the nation quickly loses direction and ceases to advance, or worse, people like party politicians will take and use that power in the state governments without a competent leader.

What I am talking about is essentially political distributism, it seeks to give that national power to as many people as possible, so that subsidiarity is actually effective. The provincial governments exercise BOTH local power and the federal power in a truly effective manner, and the potential exists for the Prince of that country to unite the nation when needed. He should be always formed by the necessity of acting out of subsidiarity, because he himself appointed those governments, and lack of confidence in them by the people reflects lack of confidence in himself.

That is why I say that federalism is a gross mockery of the principle of subsidiarity, because it doesn't actually distribute the power and responsibility, it just diffuses it so that the public cannot actually know who to blame, and the leaders can always blame someone else. The point in subsidiarity should not be so that the national government can coddle the American people by extolling their "state" governments and using them thus as a shield to their own irresponsibility.