Note: this must be understood in the context of the little know American history in which the original Republic was abandoned and replaced with the de facto USA inc., State citizenship replaced with US citizenship, and the present movement that is reclaiming our Republic de jour and our lives.  Please contact me if you can help make this more accurate, provide references, clarify language, or solve the policy dilemmas. 

           It is interesting that the abandonment of the Republic and the abolition of slavery were coincident.  From my study of law, it seems that the usurpation of the rights of the States and individual is the primary cause of the current tyranny.  And this is exactly what the civil war was about, or so the “mainstream” history would have us believe.  It was about States rights vs. human rights.  Although freedom for slaves was a result, enslavement of all Americans was the hidden consequence.  The 14th amendment (ref. needed)

          And this is still at the heart of the issues that split the “left” and “right.”  It is all about whose freedom.  The left wants to push on and demand federal regulations protecting animals, regulations protecting the environment, and regulations breaking the monopolies and extreme concentration of wealth and power in the hands of corporations.

          The right responds that the federal government must be restrained because it is subsidizing the factory farms, giving land for devastating resource extraction, and subsidizing the corporations while exempting them from taxation.

          The answers to these questions are not simple.  Compassion for all life must be protected be it slave, animal, or child.  But if we give the federal government the power to control this, then why not surrender our governance to a world power.  Why not force our morality on every nation in the world? 

          I agree that it is time to expand control of the federal government in some areas.  Just like we gave slaves their freedom at the expense of State sovereignty, we must again take step to protect or fellow beings: natural resources, species, and many ecosystems that could be lost forever.  Just as States/individual rights advocates no longer mourn the loss of slavery, in the future they will appreciate the remaining species that were saved.  In a sense it is a protection of individual rights because if a species is lost, it is lost to everyone not just the landowner whom killed it off.

          At the same time, the left must wake up to the reality of the federal government nightmare.  We call for single payer healthcare, but the federal government has made that illegal on the state level (ref.)  If the FG stuck to their constitutional jurisdiction then some States would already have single payer, and we would at least have the option of moving there.  The good example of those states would win over the others.  Sometimes us left should have faith that our compassion and wisdom will spread; we need to see that a command and control method often alienates us and hurts our causes.   Look at the strength and growth of the “liberal” cities: Portland, Ithaca, ect.  In Portland centralized control of development saved the nearby countryside, and made the urban center dense and vibrant.  This would not have happened in a “free market” setting, as evidenced by the uncontrolled development in most of the country resulting is sprawling barren suburbs and abandoned depressed urban centers.  Yet at the same time I am sure that if the federal government were to take command of development on the national scale powerful interests would take advantage and the results would be as bad, if not worse, than they already are. 

          Yes there will always be risk that the FG be corrupted.  But it does have functions that should be utilized.  The FG is a check upon the States to respect the freedom of all people.  One of it’s constitutional functions is to regulate trade, making sure that interstate trade is done with transparency.  The federal government also regulates monopolies, or it should.  Yet recently the FCC moved to institute “net neutrality,” which would help to limit the telecommunications companies monopoly on information.  Although many of our good right wing sites would likely be blocked by the corporate controlled ISPs, still we stood by and watched Ron Paul vote to block these regulations without protest.  Again the past shows how regulation on this industry will reap great rewards: look at the success of the American telephone system. Technically the feat of bringing high speed broadband and access to virtually unlimited on-demand channels, is even easier that bring telephone service to the whole country (the poles are already up, and fiber is cheaper than copper.)  But it didn’t happen without federal intervention: common carrier requirements were key to breaking the telephone companies monopolies.  Similar common carrier requirements would provide the same remedy to the current telecommunication company monopolies.  The federal government could also prevent the States from passing the popular mandatory licensing requirements that strip municipalities of their bargaining rights when telecommunications companies want to obtain franchises for their networks.  This is a regulatory overreach by the State governments violating the right of the municipalities to contract freely.

          Yes there will always be a tension between different people’s rights.  The left will often support communal land rights over individual.  But then they will protest when big business pressures the government to force individuals off their land to allow for a big development project.  The right will scoff, because they know that government always leads to abuse of power.  But then the right is also strangely silent about the problems of concentrated land ownership, the destruction of communities through real estate speculation, and massive slums of landless destitutes.  I don’t know how we can assure that everyone had means of survival without encroaching on the property rights of individuals.  It is a slippery slope in either direction.

            In conclusion: The most important thing is to get perspective.  We must always play devil’s advocate.  Think about it like this: the powers that are working to steal our freedom are not thinking in terms of “left” and “right.”  As the public opinion sways left and right, they take advantage of the opportunities offered.  With the pendulum swinging right we see them moving in for privatization, limiting bargaining rights, and expanding corporate media monopoly.  When the pendulum swings left they move in to expand regulatory control to disadvantage small businesses, expand federal power, increase taxes, and further increase our dependence on government bureaucracy.  These powers are not left or right, they don’t see the world that way.  They prevent us from uniting to stop their game by playing us against each other.  Both the left and the right need to learn where their appropriate roles lie, and become devils advocates within our movements.