Conscience of a Conservative Read Online Free Page B

examples of the "stimulative" approach. Late in 1957 a "Joint Federal-State Action Committee" recommended that certain matching funds programs be "returned" to the States on the scarcely disguised grounds that the States, in the view of the Committee, had learned to live up to their responsibilities. These are the areas in which the States were learning to behave: "vocational education" programs in agriculture, home economics, practical nursing, and the fisheries trade; local sewage projects; slum clearance and urban renewal; and enforcement of health and safety standards in connection with the atomic energy program.
    Now the point is not that Congress failed to act on these recommendations, or that the Administration gave them only half-hearted support; but rather that the federal government had no business entering these fields in the first place, and thus had no business taking upon itself the prerogative of judging the States' performance. The Republican Party should have said this plainly and forthrightly and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the federal government.
    We can best understand our error, I think, by examining the theory behind it. I have already alluded to the book, A Republican Looks at His Party, which is an elaborate rationalization of the "Modern Republican" approach to current problems. (It does the job just as well, I might add, for the Democrats' approach.) Mr. Larson devotes a good deal of space to the question of States' Rights. He contends that while there is "a general presumption" in favor of States' Rights, thanks to the Tenth Amendment, this presumption must give way whenever it appears to the federal authorities that the States are not responding satisfactorily to "the needs of the people." This is a paraphrase of his position but not, I think, an unjust one. And if this approach appears to be a high-handed way of dealing with an explicit constitutional provision, Mr. Larson justifies the argument by summoning the concept that "for every right there is a corresponding duty." "When we speak of States' Rights," he writes, "we should never forget to add that there go with those rights the corresponding States' responsibilities." Therefore, he concludes, if the States fail to do their duty, they have only themselves to blame when the federal government intervenes.
    The trouble with this argument is that it treats the Constitution of the United States as a kind of handbook in political theory, to be heeded or ignored depending on how it fits the plans of contemporary federal officials. The Tenth Amendment is not "a general assumption," but a prohibitory rule of law. The Tenth Amendment recognizes the States' jurisdiction in certain areas. States' Rights means that the States have a right to act or not to act, as they see fit, in the areas reserved to them. The States may have duties corresponding to these rights, but the duties are owed to the people of the States, not to the federal government. Therefore, the recourse lies not with the federal government, which is not sovereign, but with the people who are, and who have full power to take disciplinary action. If the people are unhappy with say, their State's disability insurance program, they can bring pressure to bear on their state officials and, if that fails, they can elect a new set of officials. And if, in the unhappy event they should wish to divest themselves of this responsibility, they can amend the Constitution. The Constitution, I repeat, draws a sharp and clear line between federal jurisdiction and state jurisdiction. The federal government's failure to recognize that line has been a crushing blow to the principle of limited government.
    But again, I caution against a defensive, or apologetic, appeal to the Constitution. There is a reason for its reservation of States' Rights. Not only does it prevent the accumulation of power in a central government that is remote from the people and relatively immune from popular restraints; it