Beware of flawed federalism
Conservatives face an apparent Catch-22. We respect federalism and local control, but we also want our national political leaders to stop radical left-wing encroachments on the family — particularly when it comes to the political indoctrination of children through critical race theory or radical gender ideology.
A recent episode highlighted this tension. When congressional Republicans tried to defend families in education by passing a Parents Bill of Rights Act in the House, some pundits argued based on the principles of federalism that the national government shouldn’t be meddling in such local affairs at all.
But the federal government is already meddling in local affairs, and the only way to stop it is if Congress gets involved to defend the rights of parents and our children.
Over decades, Washington created an administrative state authorized either by legislative establishment, budgetary approval, or executive fiat. The bloated and unelected bureaucracy is an impediment to true federalism.
The administrative state directs policy for state and local governments by creating regulations with the force of law and by setting specific conditions for funding.
That’s exactly what is happening in education. The U.S. Department of Education spends about $63 billion on public school, much of which is dedicated to ideologized indoctrination instead of education. The Department of Education shapes young minds through how it distributes funding or in the types of programs it supports.
In these last two years we have seen countless examples of how the federal bureaucracy and national teachers’ unions have shifted education away from a process of shaping children into virtuous, intelligent, well-read, and free adults and into a system of ideological indoctrination that wrestles the hearts and minds of children away from their parents, away from patriotism and away from their own sexuality.
Parents across America agree that the education system in our country is broken, and it is broken because the federal government got involved and supplanted community values.
This is the point where many conservatives with good intentions over-emphasize federalism. They say that the government caused the problem, but it’s not right to use the government to fix it.
This is a flawed argument. Democrats have already been using federal power to undermine families for well over a century. We can’t fix education problems by doing nothing. Inaction ensures the continuation of the dangerous status quo.
The only way to restore federalism and protect families is to use federal power ourselves. Republicans promised to be the Party of the Family, and the Parents’ Bill of Rights is a worthy first step to restore parental control over education. Ideally, Congress could eliminate the Department of Education, but that will be a long-term project.
In the meantime, a suitable next step would be a total ban on federal dollars for sex-education. As professor Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School so eloquently argued, government speech on controversial matters interferes with the free speech rights of parents. Parents must recover their authority over the moral and religious formation of their children, particularly in the realm of sexuality and procreation. The government’s decades-long subversion of the family in this arena has delivered the hair-raising results we see today: sexually explicit materials in elementary school libraries, discussions of sexual orientation and practices among children, and mass confusion about basic biological realities like male and female.
The government is meddling in state, local, and family life with disastrous results whether we like it or not. Our choice is to do nothing and let it get worse, or use our political power to push back.
If you really want to help families, beware of flawed federalism.
Mary Miller represents Illinois’ 15th District and Tom McDonough is executive director of American Family Project.