Regarding Ivan Webber's letter (Forum June 23) on the states acting like spoiled children and wanting to govern themselves rather than allowing the federal government to be their wise parent:
Mr. Webber doesn't seem to know the history of the founding of this great land, which tells of the banding together of the several sovereign states for mutual protection and the common good.Our country is unique in that it is composed of individual states that united for strength and common commitment against invasion, etc. Thus our name is not simply America but rather the United States of America - a composite of entities. Each state is an individual part of the agreement to unite for specific and limited purposes.
Each state elects its own governing body from among its own citizenry to attend to their own unique rights and desires.
Our sovereign states are NOT the offspring of the federal government. Rather, together with some reluctance and much fear they agreed to form a federal government to provide a few common goals. And then, because of their first-hand knowledge of past indignities and outright tyrannies over the rights of the people by those who wielded great power in Europe from whence they fled, our forefathers set up a Bill of Rights, which set limits on the powers of government over the people.
They knew that no government could be trusted to be benign; none in past history had ever remained so, once a central government had the power to control. In the early 1900s when the United States added a federal income tax, it began to usurp the sovereignty of the states.
Mr. Webber pictures the federal government as an all-wise parent and each state as a wayward child chaffing at parental restrictions.
In reality the federal government has become more like a dictatorial, interfering parent toward its grown-up, independent and responsible adult family who have been coerced into "contributing" (taxes) a large percent of the family's income, and then being forced to watch the greedy all-wise one squander it, use it to set up bureaucracies to enforce their will upon the people, give it away to whomever the authorities choose, or even see it wrapped up as a gift (pork) to be returned to some of the people to curry their favor (votes).
B. Clayton
St. George