No Thanks, We’ll Do It Our Way

Jim Yardley / American Thinker

The Founding Fathers are usually credited with designing the nation as a republic when they drafted the Constitution. Some insist that the nation be described as a democratic republic.

But it might be even more accurate to say that they created a federal democratic republic. By creating a federal system, the founders also created a mechanism that has prevented a second American Revolution for nearly 240 years.

Each of the "several states" is independent; they can create their own laws, set their own taxes, and generally ignore the laws of the other 49 states, so long as those laws recognize the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution. There are exceptions to this, of course, where the states have cooperated in drafting uniform laws to facilitate interstate commerce, such as the Uniform Commercial Code. Generally however, each state goes its own way. While all states have laws against murder, for example, each state defines what behavior constitutes premeditated murder versus manslaughter, and those definitions may vary from state to state.

But the bonus that the founders provided by making the nation a federal system is the availability of escape from intolerable abuses of governmental authority. The federal system allows people to vote with their feet. The latest census shows this "pressure release valve" working as the populations of California and New York decline while the populations of Indiana and Texas rise.