Miracle at Philidelphia

I'm about 3/4 of the way through my latest book this week called "Miracle at Philadelphia". It's a look at what ultimately became known as the Constitutional Convention. Fifty-five messengers from the original states (Rhode Island boycotted) came to Philly to basically rework the Articles of Confederation. They weren't there to write the document which has become the supreme law of our land but that's ultimately what they did.

I'll likely write a full review later but I grabbed this book the other day because I was interested in the foundations of what is known as federalism. As I eluded to in a previous post on "The Theme is Freedom", I'm in the camp that believes federalism is a good thing. Federalism is basically the idea of a limited Federal government with the goal being to allow states and (ultimately localities and individuals) to make the most amount of decisions possible. The federal government basically makes the decisions we all live by and each state retains its right to govern on issues that do not concern the whole of the union.

Unfortunately nearly every issue today is resolved at the federal level. It's sad. We've lost the idea of personal responsibility and most of the politicians running for president are spending their time telling us how they would like to run the USA like the old USSR. Taking pages from Plato's "Republic", most of those running for our nations highest individual office are making promises to wipe every one's nose and hold every ones bedpan.

While the idea of a proverbial nurse for life sounds appealing, I'm concerned our country is in for a wake up call when our nurse declares us senile and no one wants to listen to our desires for our own lives any more. After all... we have a nurse to look after our best interest.

And when we were sane we asked for it.