According to the Federalist Papers, the Federal government isn't supposed to have much power. What happened?

Question

Now we've got Obama talking nationalized health care!

Answer 1

Our libertie's safeguards eroded away a little at a time until eventually you could do anything in the name of "National Security" or the like. Each little step away from freedom didn't seem so bad, but living in the current America stepping back and taking a look at what's happened...it's sickening.

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."

-Thomas Paine

Answer 2

You are right, the states were supposed to have the power in country as founded.  I am not sure how it came to be the Federal Government has most of the power.

Nationalized health care is not how I would describe Obama's plan.  A single payer health care plan, like the rest of the industrialized world has is how I would do so.

Answer 3

The Spring of 1933 happened. The new President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to deal with the realities of the Great Depression which started a few years earlier. So, he took a phrase from Article Two of the Constitution (..he shall, from time to time give to the Congress information on the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient..) and drove a truck through that phrase, locking in place one Federal program after another. After World War Two, the reality of the Atomic Age brought about the reorganization of the Armed Forces and the creation of the National Command Authority which permitted the President to have unilateral authority to launch nuclear weapons without a resolution from the Congress to declare war. That was done even though the authority to declare war cannot be delegated by the Congress to some other authority and no other authority is allowed to accept such a delegation.

Through it all we have been conditioned, like Pavlov's dogs, to view the President as some sort of Federal Wizard King, rather than the official given certain powers under Article Two of the Constitution.