The Federalism Issue

Julian Sanchez concedes the point regarding "nanny state" activity being perfectly reasonable when the people being nannied are children. Instead, he's upset on federalist grounds about the idea of congress making snack regulations for public schools.

To which I say . . . eh.

In practice, arguments about federalism are almost universally made opportunistically. People favor devolving power to the states when they think doing so will produce policies they approve of, and people favor concentrating power in Washington when they think doing so will produce policies they approve of. Everyone knows this. And while one might condemn the hypocrisy of it all, this always strikes me as a good thing to be hypocritical about. I don't really have a principled view about the appropriate division of powers between states and the federal government and don't really intend to develop one. The congressional policy being enacted here seems to me to be a good one, so that's good enough for me.