[shadowgovt]

The history of the US has been a history of power centralization for good reason, unfortunately. The experiment of decentralized state level authority has been found wanting to the tune of a civil war and a Great depression, both of which were addressed by centralizing federal power.

[quantumBerry]

Power centralization is rarely predicated on reasons that include the benefit of common man. The US doesn't appear much different in that regard, either.

[shadowgovt]

There were two major events in US history that caused significant Federal power consolidation. Technically three, if you count the collapse of the government that was structured under the Articles of the Confederacy prior to the Constitution because it's lack of tax authority meant that it couldn't deal with the war debts that have been accrued from 1776 onward.

The first was the civil war, and federal power consolidated for obvious reasons. Easily half the states demonstrated that they could not be trusted to run their own affairs and protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution.

The second was more subtle. The reinterpretation of the Constitution that occurred during the Great Depression granted the federal government the authority to regulate commerce within States under the interstate commerce clause. This authority drives everything from farm subsidies to drug regulation. It is a piece of federal power that people can reasonably argue about the virtue of, but in a modern comment deeply interconnected world it's reasonable to believe that the federal government needs limited central economic planning authority for the country to flourish.

[quantumBerry]

>Easily half the states demonstrated that they could not be trusted to run their own affairs and protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution.

So instead we have a more centralized federal government that cannot be trusted to protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution ( that same post civil war government interned the Japanese, allows police to search any vehicle with the "signal" of a dog, and instead of enslaving blacks just disproportionately tosses them to wither away in prison instead. Instead of enslaving brown people here, now our kinder gentler federal government just blow them up in foreign countries instead. )

>The reinterpretation of the Constitution that occurred during the Great Depression granted the federal government the authority to regulate commerce within States under the interstate commerce clause. This authority drives everything from farm subsidies to drug regulation.

That's the first time I've seen the war on drugs used to justify the centralization of power. I suppose we need a new civil war against the "untrustworthy" states that have legalized marijuana so affairs can be run the right way.

It's pretty "reasonable" to believe the federal government DOESN't need the authority they currently have.

[shadowgovt]

You make an excellent point regarding federal drug law as it relates to state-by-state legalization. It's fascinating that here we have a case of the executive blatantly refusing to enforce the law, but Congress also blatantly failing to press the issue (which they could) because they know doing so would be incredibly unpopular... But at the same time, refraining from codifying that policy into law, because doing so would be incredibly unpopular with the percentage of the electorate that still believes marijuana should be illegal.

It's weird to watch.

[macintux]

> that same post civil war government interned the Japanese, allows police to search any vehicle with the "signal" of a dog, and instead of enslaving blacks just disproportionately tosses them to wither away in prison instead. Instead of enslaving brown people here, now our kinder gentler federal government just blow them up in foreign countries instead.

I would say the 1st and last examples are examples of the federal government making a very bad call. The others are primarily the fault of local governments.

[retrac]

There was another but we're still grappling with it. Nuclear weapons, and modern weaponry, the needs of real-time modern war, have transferred powers to the Executive that did not exist before in practice. It was never intended, after all, for the President to, semi-literally, have a button to press that ends the world. It arose dynamically out of a changing response to the needs of the early cold war, and has become effectively part of the unwritten constitution, without it ever really being explicitly considered how it should fit into the puzzle.

[jjlustig]

Your also forgetting the 16th amendment (federal income tax). This arguably was the critical aspect in increasing federal power.

[xxpor]

It does seem that the history and political coalitions leading to it are wildly underdiscussed

[BeFlatXIII]

How did a lack of federal power cause the Great Depression? I can see how it took a strong Federal government to do that the states could not to end the Depression, but not how that lack of power was a cause of getting into that specific mess.

[shadowgovt]

Lack of federal power didn't cause the Great Depression, it showed that there were peacetime problems that states operating economically independently could not address.