One of the major stories coming from the Chinese Virus drama is the dysfunction of American federalism. Woodrow Wilson’s administration began the process of accumulating power at the expense of state governments, and Franklin Roosevelt added to the theft by exploiting the whirlwinds of Great Depression and world war to disguise his intent and complete much of the power grab. Since 1945, the national government has stood as the republic’s hegemon, exercising powers prohibited to it by the Constitution, and ensuring that those who govern Americans are as physically far away from them as possible.
Though there has been some infrequent criticism of Washington’s ever-expanding power by governors and other elected officials condemning the unconstitutional theft of power from the states, the national government’s steady, Supreme Court-backed accumulation of excessive centralized power has continued. Loving this reality, the Democrats have made it excruciatingly painful for an individual or group to champion the end of Washington’s wholesale stripping of the states’ power. The Democrats and their mainstream-media employees have done so by identifying the idea of “states’ rights” as blatant racism which could only be expressed by neo-Confederates seeking secession and rebellion.
And then along comes President Trump. Facing the Chinese Virus-panic, Trump sought to conduct the anti-virus campaign in a manner the Founders would have applauded. He knew that those politicians who are closest to the people – governors, mayors, and state-and-local level elected politicians – and not Washington, are most knowledgeable about local impacts and needs and therefore best positioned geographically and knowledge-wise to fight the Chinese Virus.
Trump recognizes that the domestic role envisioned by the Founders for the national government is that of defending all Americans in every state by assisting the state governments if it is requested to do so. Seventy-five years after the centralizing FDR passed away, Trump called on the republic’s governors to do their job in ways that would work where they were located and with the people they knew, assuring them the national government would support their efforts in every possible way. He was as good as his words, but most of the state-based officials bumbled, mumbled, and failed. They damned Trump, though he did his job superbly, and, at the same time, presented themselves as being befuddled, incompetent, unprepared, cowardly, partisan, and largely irrelevant to – or not interested in? – saving lives.
For example, the three states that are the most Democratic, and most highly taxed states in the Union – New York, New Jersey, and California – saw their governors whiningly beg Trump, as if he was an absolute monarch, to snap his fingers and do the tasks they were elected to achieve. Trump more than helped, but he daily reminded the three governors – and all of their colleagues – that the federalism installed by the U.S. Constitution demands a separation of powers, and one of the most important separations – to avoid a too-powerful national government — was that those closest to the people, in this case the governors, do the heavy lifting of taking care of their citizens’ welfare and security.
Most governors, however, wanted the president to be their savior and, by doing so, disguise their utter failures. Although Trump diplomatically refused to ask Newsom, Murphy, Cuomo, and others where all the money raised by their outrageous state taxes had gone, they made him a punching bag by assigning to Trump their own transparent and deliberate failures, especially their failure to assure that adequate stockpiles of masks, ventilators, test kits, gowns, etc, were in hand and ready for use in an emergency. But Trump, to his everlasting credit, so far has refused to take these failed governors off the hook by which they were self-impaled. Unlike almost every other post-Wilson president, Trump also refused to exploit the virus to grab additional power for the national government and pressed the governors to to their jobs.
Here at home in Virginia, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam has used the Chinese Virus to further undermine the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. He signed, for example, several unconstitutional, anti-Second Amendment bills into law this month, but only because his authoritarian response to the Chinese Virus prevented pro-Constitution and pro-2nd Amendment demonstrations that would have far exceeded the size of the previous protest in January 2020. If you recall, Northam and his party declared a state of emergency, and then hid like cowards from law-abiding U.S. citizens assembled for that demonstration. Seems Northam and his party are “big brave men” only when they are black-faced and murdering just-born infants. On this score, Northam and his gang learned their trade from those other “big brave men”, Barack Obama and Eric Holder, who tried to destroy the Little Sisters of the Poor for refusing to abet the Democrats’ obsession with the joy of murdering.
Last January, Northam also inundated Richmond with police in the hope of cowing the crowd and Virginians as a whole. He had no luck on that score. Now, Northam cannot keep Virginians incarcerated in their homes forever; he and his cohorts’ time surely will come. Northam also has now vaulted Virginia to the top of what Trump last week called the states that need to be “liberated”. The national government has its hand full with the Chinese Virus, but when the republic gets that one squared away, the issues of liberty and the Constitution in Virginia will have to be addressed by President Trump and Attorney General Barr.
The Lord knows that there are more than enough armed Virginians to settle the hash Northam, et al, but it would be far better for the national government to reestablish the republican government the Constitution promises Virginians. One way or the other, it will be done. Virginia, after all, is the home of American liberty, the home of greatest of all Americans, and it is still a bastion of liberty with a strong collective memory of the reason why which George III lost his North American empire.
The collective memory of Virginians also seems to be a memory shared by Americans in many states. I personally believe that President Trump and his Chinese-Virus team have done a very good job in handling the impact of the illness, as well as in keeping Americans informed about the progress being made in the effort to end the contagion. Most important, the President, in his inimitable way, has put on daily display the mainstream media’s lethal hatred for non-elite Americans as it is exposed in the question period after each day’s briefing on the illness. I must say that I look forward to Trump’s daily mastery of the media liars who hate him, and us, and who can ask only non-substantive questions; questions that have been answered on multiple previous occasions; questions always referring to unnamed “sources”; and questions that are sent to the liars each day by the DNC.
At this point several things seem clear: (a) the medical models are as lousy as the ludicrous climate-change models and probably prompted a too-severe lockdown; (b) quite a number of governors – mostly Democrats — have gone out of their way to control all aspects of their citizens lives, including no fishing, no gardening or home repair, no buying U.S. flags, and any number of other idiot prohibitions; and (c) the strong signal sent by Democrats at all levels of government that they are using the response to the Chinese Virus as a trial run for tyranny by implementing measures meant secure their ability to completely surveil and control – even using Chinese-made drones to do so — all Americans via universal testing, daily testing to qualify to go back to work, and the wearing of some kind of badge – given the Democrats’ keen Nazi-predilections, probably a five point yellow star – to show who and who has not tugged their forelock and obeyed their governmental masters. It is good to recall that slave-owning is in the DNA of all Democrats.
Overall, Trump and his team have been great, as have the sections of the U.S. military and National Guard that have been called upon for assistance because the governors had not done their jobs. But equally important, Trump and his lieutenants have done nothing to get in the way of the American people seeing daily exactly what kind of murderous monsters inhabit the media and the national and state-level Democratic Party. The rise of demonstrations occurring nationwide against the numerous oppressive and lawless lockdown-measures that have been imposed by arrogant, thug-like Democratic politicians is a patriotic joy to witness. The demonstrators are in the street not only because many of the governors’ control measures are nuts, unconstitutional, and abusive, but because these Americans plainly see that the Democrats, and their foreign and domestic allies, are using the Chinese Virus to construct the first stretch of the road to serfdom they lust to build for all Americans.
A word to the wise. Peaceful demonstrations are always the first step in opposing the perceived advance of tyranny, but they are far from, and much more gentle than, the last step, the essence of which is graphically caught below by Virginia’s beautiful flag.
