Word: catoe
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Young Americans for Freedom, sent around a rebuttal: "FEDERALISM: OLD AND NEW Or, The Pretentions of New Publius Exposed, By Cato...
...Cato, a literal-minded constitutionalist, lets fly with oratorical grapeshot: "If New Publius is saying that once the Federal Government determines that a problem-any problem-exists and decides that something should be done about it, the States have the first option to take action and if they refuse the Federal Government may rightly act on its own-if this be his argument, then not only is it objectionable, it is revolutionary. Power implies the right to say No and make it stick, it includes the right of a State to decide for itself whether a 'problem' exists...
...enforce it. Writes New Publius: "To the New Federalists, morality in the nation is determined not by government policy, church decree or social leadership -what is moral is what most people who think about morality at all think is moral at a given time." Rejoins Cato: "Morality then, to New Publius, is the temporary decision of a majority of those who happen to take the effort to think about it ... The 'national conscience' resides in Washington, and if New Publius has his way it will be extended to every nook and cranny of the land at bayonet point...
...Cato argues, however, that the Nixon Administration is involved simply in problem solving, that it is fatuous to surround such programs with a philosophical explanation, for it is basic to their philosophy that the programs would be vulnerable. Cato denies that he is advocating a retreat into the past. "There is another option," he writes, "principled convenience." By that he means, vaguely, being chary of enforcing the federal will too strongly. The unanswered question is: Whose principles? Whose convenience...
...President encourages the intramural philosophizing but has no plans to embrace either interpretation. He has taken some courses close to New Publius' theory, others more appealing to Cato. That simply proves that the man in the White House is not a consistent ideologue, which is perhaps just as well. Whatever treatises churn forth from the White House, politics is still the art of the possible...