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0 pointsvezzy-fnord10y ago0 comments

The founding fathers knew this [...] and that's why they intended on having a very limited federal government that had little control over social programs and whose main purpose was to see that states take it upon themselves to enforce rights provided by the constitution.

Hardly. The Articles of Confederation only lasted some 12 years and was very quickly superseded by the Constitution which granted a much stronger federal government with executive and taxing powers. Nor were the Founding Fathers in any harmonious agreement in the slightest. Since the beginning, there had been persistent debates from the federalist side (like Alexander Hamilton) and the anti-federalist side (like Thomas Jefferson), the debate still going on to this day.

As much as you and I may dislike it, Hamilton won.

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zxcvcxz10y ago

What you're saying is a bit disingenuous. I never said anything about the articles of confederation and I was referring to the constitution as we know it. No where do I say the founding fathers wanted the federal government to have no power, just that they wanted the federal government to have limited power, and this is pretty undeniable. If they wanted all power concentrated at a federal level they would not have allowed the states to exist.

vezzy-fnordOP10y ago

Considering Hamilton proposed and helped enact tariffs on imports to fund the Treasury, a national bank to, among other things, assume state debts, and was also key to the Federalist Party advocating strong central government, your polemic is an exercise in begging the question through and through. You've taken "limited power" to refer to whatever the current state of affairs is and draw a conclusion that any deviation is a slippery slope into Soviet-style bureaucracy.

Also, U.S. states don't have sovereignty by definition.

yellowapple10y ago

> Considering Hamilton

That's one of dozens. There were plenty of Democratic-Republicans, too, like Jefferson and Madison.

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