
Allen Thomas, a Featured Author of the Kim Monson Show, joins Kim to discuss his latest essay, The Ultimate Rivalry: States’ Rights versus the Federal Government. The issue of states’ rights versus the federal government was a concern at the beginning of the founding of the United States of America. Anti-Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, took the view that a sovereign federal government, a state, then serves the federal government. James Madison devised a system of checks and balances where the state gives a portion of its right to the federal government “to prevent contentions between the states and to foster commerce.” But what happens if a state does something that its citizens want that goes against federal laws? Or if the federal government passed a law that a state’s citizens had extreme opposition to? How do the theories of Madison and Hamilton play out in our current political climate? Thomas and Kim discuss this in the first hour of today’s show. Go here to read Thomas’s essay.