The more I listen to the Tea Party, the more I realize that when they refer to the Constitution and the intent of the framers, they are really thinking of the Antifederalists – that is, those who opposed the Constitution because they thought it would lead to a tyrannical federal government. When Tea Party people argue that health care, or environmental protection, or social security should be left to the states, they are basically arguing against federal authority over interstate commerce.
The point they are ignoring is that, by and large, the Antifederalists lost. Their arguments were rejected, and the Constitution was ratified.
However, their loss was not complete. One of their major objections to the Constitution was that it did not have a bill of rights; enough people agreed with that objection that the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. This was a victory for the Antifederalists; but it did not change the federal governments power to regulate interstate commerce.
The Tea Party points particularly to the Tenth Amendment, which says that any powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the people, or to the states. However, this really does not speak to the issues involved in the health care debate. The Obama administration is not claiming that there is a new federal power, the power to provide health care. It is claiming, instead, that the existence of a universal health care plan is vital to the maintenance of a free market in interstate commerce. Any debate about this issue was settled with the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 – and, in fact, had mostly been settled with the passage of the Social Security Act back in the 1930s.
There is much to admire in the Antifederalists’ vision of a small-scale, decentralized society. The world might be better off if the Constitution had not been ratified. However, it was – and its ratification led to the development of a centralized econcomy dominated by giant corporations.
Those corporations are the big threat to liberty today; we need a strong government to protect us from them. Fortunately, the Constitution allows such a strong government to develop.