“Federal bathroom policy…”
Words no American should ever utter.
Ever.
And yet here we are. Last week, the Obama administration issued bathroom directives to all public schools in the United States. Today, I eagerly await White House direction on how to wipe my butt.
I challenge anybody to reconcile presidential bathroom directives with Madison’s words in Federalist #45.
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.”
The foundation of America’s political system has crumbled. The philosophical bedrock the United States was founded on has eroded completely away. America has unfettered itself from its constitutional moorings.
Edmund Pendleton served as the president of the Virginia ratifying convention and was also a member of the First Continental Congress. Writing about the Constitution, Pendleton said, “Our dearest rights – life, liberty and property – as Virginians are still in the hands of our state legislatures.”
No more.
Everything rests in the hands of an oligarchy in Washington D.C. Essentially 10 people – the president and nine politically connected lawyers – rule over the United States. Americans have traded in their decentralized system with a limited general government for governopoly. They now live under a national government with absolutely no limits or constraints. They bow before the altar of centralized power, revere it and wrestle to control it.
On the surface, it appears the Great Bathroom War of 2016 has reawakened the importance of state sovereignty and the principles of the Tenth Amendment in at least some. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said his state would stand up against federal bathroom policy.
We will not be blackmailed by the president’s 30 pieces of silver. The people of Texas and the legislature will find a way to find as much of that money as we can if we are forced to.”
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin also had some tough talk for the feds.
The federal government has no authority to interfere in local school districts’ bathroom policies…The president is not promoting unity. In fact, he is doing quite the opposite. He is intentionally dividing America by threatening to sue or withhold funding from our cash-strapped public schools if they do not agree with his personal opinion on policies that remain squarely in their jurisdiction.”
I appreciate their stand. But it’s kind of sad that bathroom policy was the issue that pushed them to draw that line in the sand. The feds have been trampling on the authority and power of the states for decades.
In fact, this illustrates a sad truth. The sudden conservative devotion to the proper division of power between the states and the federal government has little to do with any kind of principled fidelity to the Tenth Amendment, and everything to do with the fact that they happen to disagree with Obama’s opinion on bathrooms. (Notice Bevin seems quite desperate to get his hands on that unconstitutional federal education money.)
If it was a Republican in the White House issuing directives decreeing kids must go into the bathroom correlating with their biological sex, you wouldn’t hear a peep – except from the left. Democrats would suddenly rediscover constitutional limits on executive power, while Republicans cheer their dear leader’s courage in protecting “American values.”
Doubt me? Just look at the way so many conservatives and libertarians clamor to use federal power to strike down state gun laws they don’t like. Federal authority to regulate state bathroom policy and federal authority to regulate state gun policy both grow from the same seed – a bastardization of the 14th Amendment and the elevation of federal judges to a position of unassailable authority.
So conservatives, just spare me all of the Constitution ruffling. You don’t mean it. You were complicit in creating the system that gave us the presidential bathroom edict and you embrace central authority when it suits your agenda, just like the left does.
We now have governopoly in America – one-size-fits-all monopoly government controlling the lives of more than 30 million people. Federal bathroom policy is the fruit of governopoly. And it won’t end there. People will find other aspects of life they feel compelled to control, and they will find willing allies on one side or the other of the political aisle in Washington D.C. to get the job done.
As long as Americans allow D.C. to exercise control over them, it will continue to exercise more and more control over them. Think about that the next time you want to make a federal case out of something.
