by Clay Barham
It is a project long overdue. We know how America runs best, when it worked best and what levels of government are most appropriate. We just need to back up and pare down. I do not know anyone who thinks the Post Office mentality operates any organization better than free people do.
We know our Declaration of Independence qualifies the role of free people and their government, and we know our Federal Constitution, as originally put forth, helped shape the way America functioned organizationally. If that is so, then we need only move back to a time when everything was best. America proved best for all people when compared to all other styles and forms of civil organization.
We know, from our history, government closest to the people works best. When a majority decides how things must run and those elected to do it, people do best. The Cities and Counties are the basic seats of government. Beyond those levels, responsible for the tasks involving everyone in all the cities, counties and even the states, are the State and Federal Governments.
The people-to-people relationships once defined in local charters, state constitutions, and the Federal Constitution and its first ten amendments, suited our needs. Most everything beyond these early charters has been to confuse, disrupt, meddle and dislocate, and to assign to free people a view of their inability to care for themselves.
The growth of Federal Departments, with Cabinet Secretaries, has served to confuse and disrupt duties, which are, for the most part, 10th Amendment functions for the local and state governments, and the people.
We need a State Department to deal with our foreign relations. We need a Defense Department to be responsible for defending our nation. We need a Treasury Department to make certain our monetary relationships are stable. We can even say we need an Interior Department to coordinate relationships between homeland governments. We need a Justice Department to handle federal laws, courts and the FBI.
How can we justify all the other Departments, such as Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Transportation and Veteran’s Affairs? Most of their functions ordinarily belong, if at all, to the local governments and the people.
Get rid of the excess Departments and pare the Fed down. All those departments do is duplicate functions of local and state governments, and interfere with them. They contribute nothing to the efficiency or operation of local agencies involved in their responsibilities. Things worked well before they got involved.
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution was right and proper and should be observed.
Ridding the Fed of these Departments removes much of the money-magnets attracting lobbyists and corrupting Representatives, Senators and bureaucrats. A Constitutional Convention called to do this job would invite irreparable harm by special interests and social tinkering. Too many altruistically bent do-gooders out there see themselves as needed elite to manage the affairs of Americans.
Give them a hand in the process and we are back to communalism, socialism and communism, where the representatives of the unwilling and incapable crush the efforts of the doers and builders of a free society. Allow the contents of the Treasury to shape the process, and greed sets the tone. Avoid revocation of Constitutional Amendments, as it would slow the process in getting enough people to accept changes. I speak here of the 16th Amendment, allowing direct taxation, and the 17th Amendment allowing direct election of United States Senators.
To simplify it all, just revoke laws establishing departments and bureaus that have no real value to liberty. It would be an easier task. Only those who now profit from one or another agency will fight when their purses are deprived.
A Party Convention should find and nominate candidates who will pledge to reduce the size and scope of the Federal Government. They would provide voters with a plan and approach to stop all new hiring at the Federal Level, drastically cut the budgets for each Department to be phased out, sending whatever essential functions they have back to the states. They would campaign on returning the Republic back to its best times, keeping whatever changes do not conflict.
It would be a tall order. It would require each candidate to step out and sing the praises of the Republic in its hey-day, not the rewritten historical views of Hollywood and the left.
This would be the approach least encumbered by legal roadblocks, but it would be the program demanding the most courage and commitment on the part of candidates. It would also require control of both Houses of Congress as well as the White House.