Two good pieces have come out recently advocating distributing power away from the federal government in Washington towards the states and the counties: one by Alex Castellanos and the other by Arnold Kling. Castellanos writes to give the GOP a message for the 2010 electoral cycle that can reach the ears of the Millennial generation. He puts the ideas of individual liberty and free markets in terms of networks, such as Facebook. Free markets work, he argues, because their network-like structure allows coordination among individuals more efficiently than a hierarchical, top-down, command structure.

Kling, on the other hand, notes that those hierarchical command structures simply don’t work. A national government must institute a uniform policy, which can never satisfy everyone in a large country like the United States. State governments can create a variety of policies, each tailored to the different preferences of their residents. State and local governments can also respond more quickly to policy challenges because of the reduced chain of command.

Yet, neither of these articles presents any radically new ideas. James Madison outlined the federal nature of the Constitution in Federalist No. 10 and Federalist No. 39. In the Federalist No. 10, Madison argues for a large nation, so as to diminish the influence of any one faction in the body politic. With many competing interests, a government could not pass laws that benefited one group at the expense of another, such as the recent Senate heath care bill where all 49 states would pay for the costs of Nebraska’s heath care.

In Federalist No. 39, Madison explains how the Constitution conforms to republican principles and creates a government that is neither wholly federal nor wholly national. Though the federal government derives some of its powers directly from the people, but it mostly coordinates actions between the states and leaves most of the powers of government to the states:

The idea of a national government involves in it, not only an authority over the individual citizens, but an indefinite supremacy over all persons and things, so far as they are objects of lawful government. Among a people consolidated into one nation, this supremacy is completely vested in the national legislature. Among communities united for particular purposes, it is vested partly in the general and partly in the municipal legislatures. In the former case, all local authorities are subordinate to the supreme; and may be controlled, directed, or abolished by it at pleasure. In the latter, the local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority, than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere. In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a NATIONAL one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.

You can find the complete Federalist Papers here: It’s like an owner’s manual for the Republic.