Whatever Happened to the Sovereign State?

I recently read an article from CNN.com that argued for the abolition of the electoral college in America's voting system.  Apparently several organizations are arguing that this system is antiquated; that it shouldn't be used because the president-elect might not end up being the American people's overall popular choice for the president.  An organization called the National Popular Vote is lobbying to have states give all of their electoral votes the presidential candidate who wins the American popular vote.

My first thought when I read this article was "What about sovereign states?!"  It was as if people were considered, first and foremost, citizens of America, rather than citizens of their individual states.  The electoral college is meant to elect a president based on the will of the states, not the will of the total population of America.  But this blog post isn't about the electoral college.  It's about the sovereignty of states.

William Tyler Page, in his historic document titled The American's Creed, once called America "a sovereign nation of many sovereign states."  I'm writing this blog post to examine the popular notion which has risen in the post-civil war era that America is simply a sovereign nation.  In this post, I will very briefly inspect this very common idea and the disadvantages of viewing our great nation as a single, sovereign entity.

When our founding fathers wrote the foundational document outlining our country's governmental system - the United States Constitution - they established that the federal government was meant to protect and mediate between the individual states in the U.S.A.  The federal government would "protect each of [the states] against invasion" and "guarantee every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government" (emphasis added).  Notice the recognition of the the Union as being composed of individual states that have their own republican form of government.  

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution also recognizes the importance of the individual States, and is perhaps one of the most enlightening sections of the Constitution.  This amendment addresses the issue of what powers are relegated to the States.  In it we see that the States are much more powerful than many modern politicians or the modern media would have us think.  The amendment's exact wording follows:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

So we see that all powers that the constitution does not directly relegate to the federal government - our Sovereign nation - are meant to be exercised by the separate states.  Despite the view that has permeated popular culture's understanding of this founding document of our country, the States actually hold much more power than the federal government.

We cannot blame the people of the individual states completely for not maintaining sovereign states.  As with most of America's political problems, the Supreme Court is involved heavily in this issue ;) .  In fact, as early as 1920, the Supreme Court was writing statements like the following: 

"The only question is whether ... it is forbidden by some invisible radiation from the general terms of the Tenth Amendment. We must consider what this country has become in deciding what that amendment has reserved."

I don't know about other readers, but the "general terms" of the tenth amendment seem rather specific to me.  It's as if the justices who wrote this decision were willingly blinded to the fact that ALL powers not given to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the states.  In fact, many supreme court judges have held this view that the Constitution is a "living organism" and should be interpreted according to societal implications.

It is this loose interpretation of our United States Constitution that results in the federal government taking on too much power for itself and ignoring the power of the States.  It is also this same mindset which results in the popular movement to abolish the electoral college as a means of electing a president.  Let's not fall into this trap - remember that you are a member of a sovereign state, which is an individual entity in a sovereign nation.

Benjamin Gates, a fictional historian/adventurer, sums up America's current mindset on this issue best in the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets.  "Before the Civil War, the states were all separate," he begins, "people used to say 'United States are.' Wasn't until the war ended, people started saying "The United States is.'"  In the movie, this quote is supposed to be inspirational.

Personally, I find it quite depressing.