One of the most precious political legacies the founding fathers left Americans was federalism. The American Heritage dictionary defines it as "A system of government in which power is divided between a central authority and constituent political units." A synonym often used by the founders was "confederation."

In America's case, power is divided between the federal government in Washington and the state governments. Under the Bill of Rights, power is further divided by guaranteeing certain rights to the people themselves.

The American Revolution broke with the central authority in Great Britain and began operating under the already existing Continental Congress, a loose federation of the 13 states. The Declaration of Independence specifically referred to "these states" and insisted on the plurality of states coming together in a federal union: "as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do."

It's also worth remembering that four states - Virginia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Maryland - issued their own declarations of independence from Great Britain.

And the Articles of Confederation said, "The states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatsoever."

The meaning was clear: Every state had a right to make its own laws, to declare its independence, but also to join with the other states in declaring independence from Great Britain and forging a common army and navy to defend themselves.

This structure allowed the widest range of freedom for the smallest but most important units of society, the individual, the family, the local business and the community.

For a long time, this plural nature of our country was reflected in referring to the country in the plural, as "the United States are in the Western Hemisphere," whereas most people today would say is. Even today, Americans abroad refer to being "back in the states."

OUR FEDERALISM

"The United States of America was not the first, but has unquestionably been the most successful attempt to reconcile the presumable desideratum of general freedom with the necessity of social discipline," wrote Felix Morley in "Freedom and Federalism" in 1959. "Even if this unusually experimental form of government is doomed to eventual failure, the record of its tangible accomplishment will have proved unprecedented. … By the adoption of arrangements strongly negative toward the power of government, the Republic has so far permitted and encouraged its citizens to act affirmatively in their own interests. Many Americans do not realize that when first attempted this political plan was extraordinary, indeed revolutionary in the full sense of the word.

"The United States, as the name implies, are a union of sovereign states, federal in nature. ... First and foremost, federalism involves dispersion of political power. … This division of sovereignty between the central government and the constituent states must be defined. In consequence, a constitution is prerequisite to any federation. ... By the device of keeping certain governmental powers under strictly local control, people with great diversities may be encouraged to unite under one flag."

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION

As the Constitution was being written and considered, the founders carried on one of the most famous political debates in history.

Newspapers across the land published defenses of the new Constitution and attacks on it. The most famous defenses were collected in "The Federalist Papers." Those opposed to the Constitution were called "Anti-Federalists," even though they actually favored federalism themselves by retaining the Articles of Confederation. The Anti-Federalists worried that the new Constitution eventually would lead to consolidated power.

The Federalist and Anti-Federalist editorials and speeches are collected on many Internet sites and in "The Debate on the Constitution," two recent volumes from the Library of America.

The Federalists won the debate and the new Constitution was adopted, but the Anti-Federalists' attacks forced the Federalists to sharpen their arguments, weaken the power of the federal government and adopt the Bill of Rights.

All the founders loathed extreme centralization of power, which they attacked as "consolidation," of the type found in the European despotisms of their day. However, Alexander Hamilton was one of the founders who favored more centralization than did Patrick Henry, Jefferson and others.

THE FEDERALISTS SPEAK

But even Hamilton wrote in Federalist 32, "An entire consolidation of the states into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts; and whatever powers might remain in them would be altogether dependent on the general will. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the state governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, exclusively delegated to the United States."

"Delegated" is another key word. It means the states themselves grant to the federal government only a few powers.

In Federalist 45, James Madison insisted, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the state."

Which powers are "delegated" and "defined"? Only the 18 listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. These powers - all granted only to Congress, not the president or the courts - included collecting taxes (but not an income tax until the 16th Amendment in 1913), borrowing money, establishing uniform laws of bankruptcy and naturalization, coining money (not printing it), establishing courts and post offices and declaring war.

THE FEDERALIST BILL OF RIGHTS

Ten federalist exclamation marks were added: the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment begins sternly, "Congress shall make no law," and continues, "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The much-neglected 9th Amendment guarantees, "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This means that the federal government can't abridge a right just because it's not mentioned in the Constitution. For example, the government can't spy on library patrons, as the FBI has begun to do, just because "libraries" aren't mentioned in the Fourth Amendment "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

The 10th Amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." There's that word "delegated" again. It means that, if something isn't specifically mentioned in the 18 powers delegated to Congress, the feds can't do it.

DEPARTURES FROM FEDERALISM

It's not surprising over the course of the life of a civilization that it will depart from its foundation, which in America's case includes the Constitution. People and times change; words shift meaning; memories are short.

Which is why today it sometimes is hard to see the federalist (as opposed to "federal" government) nature of our polity. The federal government consumes 20 percent of the GDP, 10 times the norm in the 19th century. Myriad regulations control our lives.

Federal authorities effectively have pre-empted the state and local governments in such matters as internal security and law and order. The feds also have pre-empted individual rights on health care (Medicare and Medicaid), retirement savings (Social Security), helping the poor (welfare), etc.

I remember growing up in the early 1960s in a country with a much smaller federal presence. More was locally governed - schools, courts, city and state governments. Nowadays, these bodies usually beg for federal grants for training or some new service, which usually come with federal controls.

One of the worst developments is the uniformity of police forces across the land. Many top-level police get training from the FBI. And the unconstitutional "war" on drugs has federalized police forces as never before. In California, local police sometimes don't use our state's property-seizure law because in the mid-1990s the Legislature made it less onerous. So the local police use federal laws, which make it easy to seize property even if a person is innocent, the Fourth Amendment guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" notwithstanding.

SINCE 9/11

The "war on terrorism" since 9/11 has made matters worse. The U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft - ironically a supporter of the Federalist Society - has increased surveillance on and decreased the liberties of citizens. The feds now can snoop on just about anybody on the Internet without a warrant.

The feds are doing this as a matter of "homeland security." But what are they securing? Not the Constitution they keep violating.

But despite these violations, the federalist impulse in the American polity remains strong. It practically is impossible to control almost 300 million people from a central authority. Even the Soviets couldn't do it, with even stronger police powers.

Nowadays, it's hard to know which few powers remain with the people because the government keeps restricting them. But I don't think the restriction can last. History shows the oscillation between centralized and independent states. China, India, Rome and other states have started out as loose associations, were jammed into consolidated states, then broke apart again, sometimes to repeat the process over and over across the millennia.

The original, federalist design of of America long worked because it balanced the needs of a truly federal system of few, delegated, limited powers given to the U.S. government, and left the other powers to the states and to the people.

The perfunctory support for the president and the federal government after 9/11 has subsided and people now are looking critically at all those new powers the federal authorities took. People are realizing how little security they are getting at such a great price.

FUTURE FEDERALISM

The Internet is the greatest boon to federalism ever invented, diffusing knowledge everywhere. The founders would have loved it.

As such information theorists as Brooks Adams and Marshall McLuhan have noted, political connections follow trade lines. Nowadays trade lines, thanks to the Internet, are becoming more decentralized. So will governments, as we're seeing in secession movements from the breakup of the Soviet Union, to the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood wanting to leave Los Angeles.

The way to fight terrorism in such an age is not with outmoded centralization, but with decentralization.

That means the founders' federalist design is not a rumor from the past, but a blueprint for a future of safety and freedom.