Did you know that in 1783 we weren't a nation? Each of the colonies had existed as an entirely separate government under British rule and each had formed its own national identity, when British rule was formally ended. Therefore, each colony became a state in its own right. The United States were no nation; they were a loose confederacy, more similar in spirit to the European Union than the modern United States.
The Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, laid out what was, in name, a new nation. Under them, several powers were explicitly forbidden to the states, including maintaining standing militaries, ambassadors and treaties and belligerency. More significantly, all powers not explicitly denied the states or given to the Congress were reserved for the states. This included the power of taxation - states were to provide money, based on their total property values, to the Congress for the upkeep of a military.
To say the least, this arrangement did not work. The states, retaining all sovereignty not given up to the Congress, often refused to pay up. Congress couldn't do anything because it had no power to force the states to pay. Moreover, the Congress had no power to regulate interstate trade, so the states frequently engaged in tariff wars between themselves. As a result, the national government could not fund a military; it was toothless and bankrupt.
Note the philosophy underlying this weak national government: All powers not explicitly given to Congress or forbidden to the states are reserved to the states. This makes sense, when the states are the primary unit of government and the primary unit of self-identification - in the texts of both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, "United States" is a plural noun.
Fast forward two centuries and three decades. Where do we stand? We stand as a single nation. When asked where in the world he's from, a person from the United States probably won't even think of answering with his state. In the blink of an eye, he'll say, "I'm an American." Identification with a state ranks about as strongly as identification with a city - which is to say, not very much in this mobile age. I'll think twice before moving to Canada but not blink when I consider moving to Illinois.
Governing us presently, though, is a system based on a philosophy that presumes quite the opposite: according to the founders, the states are the chief actors in the republic, not the national government - witness the 10th Amendment.
Does the system work? Yes, it works in name, but it works inefficiently. Consider, for instance, the 50 different electoral systems and the 50 different educational systems. Congress, in theory, should limit itself entirely to regulating the U.S. Postal Service and trade between the states. In practice, because the states are so economically and socially close-knit, Congress can explicitly regulate nearly everything it wants to by invoking the Interstate Commerce clause, and it can implicitly regulate the rest by threatening to withhold state funds. Meanwhile, state lines have been reduced to mere administrative boundaries - even cities are more powerful cultural and economic forces (as a friend of mine once joked while driving into Chicago, "Where are the Chicago license plates? I just see Illinois.")
What's the upshot of all this? Well, merely this: our system of government is one hundred 50 years too old. Its basic philosophy served well in its time, but it is simply unrealistic in this age of nationalism. It is time the states give up the rest of their theoretical sovereignty to the national government. It is time we reorganize every government in the United States - all 85,000 of them - to reflect the reality of the national control. It is time we finally let nationalism have its explicit expression in the form of our government because that is already the way things work.
Write to Neal at necolman@bsu.edu
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