10 / CHRONICLESnThe He de Francenby Jean Tardieun(translated by Peter Dale)nI wandered along beside your facenpoplars canals and palaces toonacross the roofs the clouds’ racenyou spoke low I listened to you.nI wandered near your banks and strandsnyou were only a smile a sleepnyour rocks your storms your handsnfrom dream to sun would sweepnLoved by a shadow clanngende faces tables laidnacross paintings you ran—nin a corner gleamed a bladenDrum, cannon and cockadenI was ready when night fellnon velvet was I laidnharvest lea forest-dellnI went to sleep in your murmuringnpeople sang and the beastsnthe music’s delirious ringndeath silence peace.nstate governments have preyed upon local authorities; andnall levels of government have passed laws interfering innfamily life. On the other side of the coin, private citizensnhave taken up the habit of showing the medius digitus tonstate: They resist the draft, invade public property, conspirento shelter illegal aliens, and go about the world makingndeals with foreign heads of state. It is a complete muddle,nand rare is the politician—liberal or conservative—whoncares anything about the problem; rarer still is the politiciannwho is willing to do anything. Under the circumstances,nvoter apathy is understandable.nThe current low estate into which politics and politiciansnhave fallen is very much the result of the deliberatenhypocrisy that is practiced upon the American people. Wentalk grandly of our democracy while at the same timenmaking war upon any group of cidzens or any region thatnoffends us. In the name of democracy we tell local schoolnboards how to run their schools and force them to redrawndistrict lines to achieve racial balance. It is a weakness in thennational character that goes back to the palmy days of thenMathers. It is the mark of the puritan that he cannot bearnthe idea that anyone is different from himself He is like thenlittle girl in the children’s story who lay awake at nightnfretting because the town clocks did not agree with hers.nA reformation at the point of a bayonet is no reformationnat all, and it cannot be said that 125 years after emancipationnrace relations in the U.S. are all they might be. Still,nnnwe cannot resist compelling other peoples to live as wenwould have them. Hardly a day goes by without a newlyndiscovered conservative calling for the overthrow of somenfriendly regime on the grounds that is not sufficientlyndemocratic. When the South Africans tell us to clean ournown house, we are shocked, but really, is Jesse Jackson sonfar wrong in his complaints? When conservative politiciansnroutinely denounce apartheid, while sending their childrennto middle-class schools and living in de facto restrictednneighborhoods, what are we to think, except that they arenwooing the black constituency? There must be less expensivenand more honorable means of buying votes than thencynical disruption of foreign policy for strictly personal andnlocal benefit. It is particularly insulting to blacks, who arenassumed—quite unfairly—to fall for such a ploy.nOur own federal system offers very practical approachesnto such problems. For us as individuals, the internal affairsnof South Africa are none of our business. Unlike France innthe 1790’s, the United States is not a revolutionary regimenobliged to spread its own ideology throughout the world.nEarly in our history we rejected the temptation to interferenin the liberation struggle of Greece, and whatever thenpoliticians might have said, we did not fight two world warsnto make the world safe for democracy. We fought them innthe belief—right or wrong—that our country was threatened.nIf there was any ideological motive behind ournentrance into World War II, then we must bear the eternalnshame of having propped up the most vicious and murderousnEuropean regime in the 20th century, the SovietnUnion.nThe case of abortion is both a harder and a simplernmatter than social justice for a federalist to handle: hardernbecause it is human lives that are at stake; simpler becausenwe already know how to handle murder in this country. It isnalmost always a case for local jurisdiction. Sure, a murderernin some states serves five years, in others 10, and if he wasnunlucky enough to shoot his victim in Governor BobnGraham’s Florida, he got what he had coming to him. Butnthe same people who don’t like the federal courts takingndown crosses or forbidding prayer in schools think it is angood idea to have a national law on abortion, preferably anconstitutional amendment. Years ago my friend John Reed,na good Christian even if he is a sociologist, set me straightnon this one. We simply cannot run our own lives andnreform New York City too. That job is beyond the capacitynof a Hercules.nThis is not a simple question of states’ rights. The statesncan be just as tyrannical as the national government. Butnours was once a limited government with a delicate systemnof checks and balances. More than the balance of powersnbetween the three branches of the central government, thenfederalist distribution among the various levels of governmentsnwas an insurance against tyranny. For some timennow we have elevated a number of principles above thenfederal arrangement: social and economic justice, equality,nindividual liberty—in a word, deniocracy. The result hasnbeen tyranny in a good cause, but tyranny nonetheless. AsnAmericans contemplate their Constitution and its legacy,nthey would do well to remember that it was federalism—nnot democracy—that guaranteed their liberties, and that itnis federalism that needs to be restored.n