Happy Tuesday faithful FR readers! Today, we have another episode of Stephen’s Monday post on Tuesday! All together now…..thank you Stephen. Enjoy!
One of my favorite of the Federalist Papers is number 17, in which it is put forth that one thing which will restrain the concentration of power from collecting at the federal level with all of the accompanying evils of a centralized government is that those criminal laws pertaining to maintaining an orderly, safe, and secure society originate at the state level which would keep the state governments foremost in the hearts of the citizenry.
Of course, as feared by the anti-federalists, the number and scope of the federal criminal statutes hath grown enormously from the days of the founding of our nation and very oft duplicate the nature of many criminal offenses which more traditionally are of such nature as to belong to the prevue of the state governments.
For example, when the police officers involved in the Rodney King arrest were acquitted by the jury of the state crimes with which they had been charged arising from their actions, they were subsequently retried upon similar federal charges for those very same acts.
Which naturally led to some discussion of whether the Constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy properly applied to all crimes arising from the same alleged acts or only applied to the specific legal act cited that a man may be tried as many times as there are redundant overlapping laws which may be applied to his actions.
However, the Reagan Revolution and the rise of conservatism wherein the rate of growth of the central federal government has been largely curtailed, though sadly no progress has been made on the notion of any actual reduction in the power of the central government.
While thwarting of the statist ambitions at the federal level along with a fairly substantial overturn of many a state legislature with more conservative elected officials has also failed to roll back or reduce the power of the state governments any more than it has to reduce the federal government. At least the growth has stopped.
An unintended consequence of such a resurgence in the philosophy of the original intent of the founding fathers has been an increasing virulence of those voices who would impose a more totalitarian state (albeit ironically in the name of liberty) as well as an increased physical and numerical concentration of that statist philosophy in the urban centers of the nation.
Where does one go to manifest one’s desired philosophy when the system of the republic in which you reside continues to thwart your efforts? Silly republic refusing to succumb to the enticements of that vixen democracy.
Well, let us look into that most telling of prognosticators, the ancient and magical crystal ball more commonly know as the news, which of late provides for much guidance in this inquiry.
Recently, a couple of cities in California have banned the unbidden dispensing of plastic straws in commercial establishments. Nay, they have not merely banned but outright criminalized the act with threats of imprisonment for up to six months in jail.
A number of cities across the nation have openly, publicly, and notoriously thumbed their collective noses at the federal government with regards to what is clearly a federal responsibility in the Constitution of enforcing the immigration laws of the nation. They applaud themselves with the self-righteous name of “sanctuary cities”, though without the allure of Quasimodo or the courage of Esmeralda (or mayhaps I have that backwards).
Several cities have taken it upon themselves to burden their own businesses with a municipally mandated minimum wage law of fifteen dollars ($15) per hour, nearly double that as required by the federal government.
(We shall ignore for the sake of the moment that the minimum wage concept finds its authority no where in the Constitution.)
These three examples serve as sufficient illustration of the growing phenomena within leftist urban centers of America seeming to be operating outside of the laws of the rest of the nation and acting as their own nations.
Several of those cities have openly talked about such things as imposing upon its citizens foreign treaties such as the Paris accord, or even commercially boycotting nations such as Israel who disagree with their city politics.
Something of note to remember before we get too far into this discussion is that a city in America is not actually a body politic in the traditional sense of the word, but rather is classified as a municipal corporation. In other words, a city is but a company identified by geography, but a corporate entity nonetheless.
(Amusingly ironic that those who most deride “corporate America” should seek political refuge inside a corporation.)
Since when did actual criminal law come to be authorized to be created by a corporation? Imagine being sent to mall jail, literally. Or being thrown in prison by Chick-fil-A?
Well, municipalities have traditionally held a quasi-governmental existence of an in rem jurisdiction to the property contained within its borders for purposes of fighting fires, as well as a limited enforcement authority, much like a housing association, to keep their defined incorporated territory free of nuisances such as dilapidated houses or public hygiene considerations like people defecating in the streets.
Which neglect of their actual duty of overseeing public hygiene coincides with certain cities’ foray into other areas of law as these cities strive to establish their own unique identity in defiance of the nation at large.
Cities have also traditionally been authorized by the state to enforce state laws, which is to say not to make up their own laws but to permit those allotted executive officers, commonly known as constables, or more recently the police, to effect arrests and bring the various accused before the country judicial officers as the county, unlike the municipality, is actually a political entity of the state rather than a corporation.
(Of course, in some of the larger cities, such as Los Angeles, the city limits have been defined as the entire county, but this is atypical.)
Somewhere along the way these lines of distinction have become blurred to the point of being unrecognizable by those in charge of the city and state governments. Like the federal government, the cities began increasingly to establish their legal muscles by enacting municipal ordinances in imitation of the state laws and enforcing those instead of those state laws.
It comes to the point that an officer for the same offense may choose to cite an offender as violating city, state, or federal laws all of which purport to cover the same acts from a seemingly different angle. So long as those laws appear to be congruous no one in the respective legislative or municipal bodies seems to take notice of the usurpation or duplication of their jurisdiction.
A republic only really works if the lines of responsibility and authority are clearly delineated between the various public bodies and the individual’s own authority. Much as has been said that one man’s rights end where the next man’s rights begin; it must also be maintained that one government’s authority must end where the next government’s authority ends.
Which brings us back to the original issue, wherein with increasing frequency we see people posting and touting maps of the blue/red political variety broken down by not merely state but county or even precinct levels to show how isolated the blue regions are geographically, while such postings are countered by refrains and postings of population demographics showing that those people in those small areas outnumber the people in the larger regions.
It is a political ploy between the geographic call of the republic versus the demographic syren’s song of democracy.
It is that political division of the left, concentrated in those urban areas which sends these cities in a quest for their own political power, the power of the municipal corporation, the modern city-state. The economy of these large super-cities rivals anything in the classical world of Athens or Rome.
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and others are increasingly viewing themselves as politically and culturally distinct from the rest of America; and the rest of America is increasingly viewing them the same way.
Might we see the breakaway of the modern American city-state? Not quite the secession image conjured by the Civil War or many of the doom sayers of late, but an interesting modern movement of urban political independence.
As such cities increasingly assert their political will, create their own laws independent of the state and the nation, the prospect of the rise of city-states within America becomes surprisingly possible.
