Joseph Sobran Founding fathers thought the federal government should be kept on a short leash The word "federalism" is enjoying a new vogue these days, as Republicans promise to give power "back to the states." But the way the power is given "back" has little to do with what the founding fathers meant by "federalism." In the current welfare reform bill, for example, the states are given power to regulate welfare programs, but with strings attached. The power is considered to come from the federal government, which supposedly "grants" it to the states. This is a reversal of what our ancestors meant by federalism - namely, that the states were the source of the federal government's powers. The states, through the Constitution, "delegated" a few carefully specified powers to the federal government. Whatever wasn't delegated was "reserved" to the states and the people. The federal government was supposed to be kept on a short leash, lest it claim powers never given to it. Today it routinely claims countless powers unmentioned in the Constitution. When a national health-care program is proposed, for example, we no longer ask the basic question: Just where does the Constitution grant this power? Answer: Nowhere. Then how did the federal government acquire so many unlisted powers? By the insidious process of "consolidation," which the Constitution was meant to prevent. So why didn't the Constitution prevent it? Because the federal government systematically reinterpreted the Constitution in its own favor. In the 1798 Kentucky Resolutions, Thomas Jefferson warned that the federal government must never be allowed to become the final arbiter of the extent of its own powers. His warning was disregarded. Eventually the Supreme Court was allowed to treat the Constitution as a "living document" - one whose meaning was not fixed but fluid, alterable at the discretion of those currently in power. Of course this defeats the whole purpose of a Constitution, or indeed any written law. What would a truly federal system look like? The possibilities are infinite. If the states were permitted to keep their individuality, we might have a checkerboard of socialist and free economies, instead of a single "mixed" economy imposed on all. Americans who preferred a welfare state, even if it meant higher taxes, might move to New York; Americans who preferred laissez-faire might migrate to Texas. In the long run, the states that imposed too many burdens on their citizens would lose population, business and finally tax monies to freer states. A federal system would create a sort of "market" in states, with citizens as consumers choosing among them. To the founders it was axiomatic, that government should be limited not only in the number of powers it exercised, but in the extent of territory it ruled. The small and local were preferable to the vast and national. If one state or local government should exceed its proper powers, citizens should be able to escape it without leaving the continent. "Federalism" has come to sound complex, abstract and technical. But it's a simple principle: Keep power as local as possible. Give a central government very few powers, and hold it strictly to them. The idea will become vivid to anyone who reads the Federalist Papers, the writings of the Anti-Federalists, the works of Jefferson, and of course the Constitution itself. The whole debate over ratifying the Constitution revolved around the question whether the federal government, given a few powers, would proceed to "usurp" more power - tyrannical power. All sides in the ratification debate would have agreed that the federal government should never be permitted to reach, or even approach, the size and scope it has achieved in the late 20th century. The chief difference between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists is that the Federalists insisted that it could never happen under the Constitution. History has proved the Anti-Federalists right. It's a scandal that so few realize this. It's also an indictment of our educational system, which blandly purveys the view that America's history has been one of smooth continuity and "progress." The more the Constitution is disregarded, the more we're assured that it's being "fulfilled." The remedy isn't private militias. It's guerrilla education, to ensure that our children learn what the schools won't teach them. Joseph Sobran is a syndicated columnist. 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