Echoing Nietzsche’s famous proclamation, several states are now declaring, in effect, “Federalism is dead.” For Americans, whose nation was founded on a belief in separate spheres of government power, this pronouncement may appear equally blasphemous. Unlike Nietzsche, though, these states believe in resurrection and hope to revive the once-sacred concept that is becoming increasingly obsolete. In legislatures across the country, state representatives have introduced bills demanding that the federal government abide by a frequently overlooked Constitutional provision: the Tenth Amendment.

The Tenth Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People.”

Receiving shockingly little attention by mainstream media, at least 11 states have introduced legislation specifically demanding that the federal government live up to the dictates of this language: Arizona, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Washington, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas. On Feb. 18, the Oklahoma House of Representatives became the first legislative body to pass just such a resolution. The immensely popular House Joint Resolution 1003 won by a margin of 83 to 13 and states “that the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.” Some analysts predict that approximately 20 other states will introduce similar measures over the next year.

I guess the situation is pretty abysmal when states feel compelled to say: “Umm, excuse me, Mr. President. Sorry to bother you. Just wanted to let you know that there’s still a large and important sphere of power that you can’t enter. No, really, there is! Please don’t laugh. It says so right here.”

These proposals come on the heels of the President’s $1 trillion economic stimulus package, which requires states to use the money for policy initiatives approved by the federal government. A particularly troublesome provision in the stimulus package creates a significant change in state unemployment requirements and repeals many of the welfare reform measures established in the 1990s. States fear that, once in place, these changes will remain years after the recession ends and after federal funding dries up. At that point, the provisions would fall under the even less popular category of unfunded mandates, which do exactly what the name suggests — they force the states to implement certain federal policies without providing the requisite funding.

This criticism applies to Republicans and Democrats alike. In fact, a recent focal point of critics’ ire was the No Child Left Behind Act, pushed through by the Bush administration. More importantly, federal spending ballooned to new heights over the last eight years, and undoubtedly the failure to tame the Leviathan that is the U.S. federal government can be attributed to both political parties.

Now it is clear that President Obama’s unprecedented $3.55 trillion budget proposal promises more of the same. Much more. Of course, the economy is not the only area in which the federal government asserted the newfound authority that magically appeared in the latter half of the twentieth century. Far from it. Through strained readings of the Commerce Clause and other constitutional provisions, the U.S. government was able to justify new intrusions into every realm of American life.

Proponents of “big government” often rely on the increasingly popular argument in constitutional debates that the times they are a-changin’, and as a “living” document, the Constitution stands for something completely different today than what it stood for in 1787. For anyone subscribing to the latter view, the following sentences will appear comically outdated: “The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.”

James Madison uttered those words many decades ago, but I would argue that they hold no less relevance today. Indeed, his conception of federalism deserves even greater attention in a society that requires legislation from the states to remind the federal government that the Tenth Amendment still exists.

The important question now is whether the burgeoning reform measures will have any impact whatsoever. If history has any predictive value, the federal government will ignore this movement and continue to grow unabated. Given the popularity of these measures, though, it is not too far-fetched to think that three-quarters of the states will join together in opposing the expansion of the federal government. At that point, they would have enough power to amend the Constitution. But what would that amendment say — “Please, please, please take the rest of the Constitution seriously”?

If it does get to that point, you can expect to hear a few brazen dissidents begin to throw around the “s” word, which, as it just so happens, rhymes with “recession.” The media will dismiss these individuals as radicals and fear-mongers, and admittedly, such a suggestion is better suited as a wake-up call than an actual policy proposal. But ask yourself: Is it really that radical to oppose a government regime which has no practical limits on its power and no longer concerns itself with the one document that purports to create such limits? Maybe it is. The Framers, after all, were a radical bunch.