In early-April, Texas Gov. Rick Perry drummed up legislative support for a resolution confirming the 10th Amendment rights of states against the ever-growing, never-ceasing encroachment of federal government power.

Then, locally, just last week at a Harrison County [Indiana] Board of Commissioners meeting, a mandate of more than a quarter of a million dollars was forced upon county officials.

Similar rallying cries ensued.

“I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens and its interference with the affairs of our state,” Perry said.

“Did the state send you a check to pay for this mandate?” Harrison County Commissioner James Goldman incredulously asked the bearer of the news last week.

“Millions of Texans are tired of Washington, D.C., trying to come down here to tell us how to run Texas,” Perry continued.

“It’s not a want to; it’s a have to,” Harrison County Auditor Pat Wolfe bemoaned.

Get the picture? The building blocks of the nation have been flipped upside down. And it wasn’t an overnight change as much as it may seem like it with President Barack Obama’s yearning to have a say in every decision a business or even individual person makes. Or, locally with Gov. Mitch Daniels attempting to streamline county government.

No, even one of Texas’ hometown sons, former President George W. Bush, followed in a long line of federal government expansion.

But that’s not how it’s supposed to be.

Reading between the lines of our nation’s founding document — the Constitution — a visual blueprint for our nation is revealed as a pyramid. The bottom layer of this pyramid of American success is both the largest and strongest block. It is the foundation and what this country was created for: the individual.

The next step up is the nearest government entity to the individual: township, county or local government.

Then comes the state government, which is only stronger and more powerful than the final block of the pyramid, the federal government.

Sadly, politicians from both sides of the aisle, including our current governor and commander-in-chief, want to turn the pyramid on its head and crush those at the bottom.

Common sense tells us such a structure cannot stand.

Ross Schulz [send him email] is a staff writer for The Corydon Democrat, which has served Harrison County, Indiana sine 1856.