Watching "Morning Joe" yesterday, waiting to fully wake up, I heard Joe Scarborough huffing and puffing about how things like healthcare shouldn't be the venue of the Federal government, but should be left to the states.. "Let the states do what they want...they know what's best for them...that's FEDERALISM!"
Actually, no, Joe, it's not. It's Anti-Federalism, a movement which plagued the Founding Fathers (which Joe and his fellow Conservatives are so fond of identifying with) during the drafting of the Constitution. The anti-federalists wanted all power to remain with the states, so that they (the wealthy plantation-owners) could control the matters in their own areas. That argument may have been more attractive in the days when everyone's life centered around one locale--most people never traveled more than 10 miles from their homes--and when they basically mistrusted the folks from the next village, let alone the neighboring state. It is not remotely feasible in this era of extreme mobility, when many people make a daily commute to work across state lines.
This is supposed to be a nation of Americans devoted to a common cause, and regardless of how the pseudo-intellectual factions of the Conservative movement want to pervert and misrepresent that fact, this is a simple and long-held belief. This is why men and women from Alabama fought alongside men and women from Illinois on the battlefields of the Argonne, or the jungles of Viet Nam, or the deserts of Iraq. It is the reason why these same men and women deserve a national system of healthcare which extends beyond parochial state lines and has national scope.
I, for one, am sick to death of the perversions of truth which have been vomited from the Right during this campaign, whether it is the "60% growth of the national debt during Obama's term" (how the hell does 3.3 billion equal 60% of 16.5 billion???) or the Socialist labels plastered on this President's efforts... I expect this kind of crap on Fox News, but can't tolerate it on MSNBC,
