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MY BROTHER, who has spent over three decades with the Air Force as either an officer or a civilian employee, bristles at most of the criticism of the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina. He is a political and social conservative who cannot understand why people expect the national government or the military to do the job of mayors and governors and local police.

Why, my brother asks, did the mayor of New Orleans blame the federal government when he did not use school buses to help evacuate his city's residents?

To a large degree, my brother's take on state responsibilities reflects the position of the 10th Amendment.

Over the nation's history, the amendment--designed in the early 1790s to prevent a strengthened national government from being too strong--has been invoked to limit Congress and the president.

But how much should their power be restricted, considering the needs of the country, the limited ability of states to handle certain problems, and the vagueness of various constitutional provisions defining the powers of the national government?

Since at least the 1930s, Democrats have seen a need for more national power while Republicans have, at least in theory, largely shared the fears of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, among others, that a national government could be a danger to individual liberties.

(Nevertheless, both political parties have used the national government in violation of a strict interpretation of the 10th Amendment, and both have played a role in the drift to what departing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor fears: "Congress will nibble away at state sovereignty, bit by bit, until someday essentially nothing is left but a gutted shell.")

Thanks in large part to depression, world wars, and Cold War, the powers of the national government have grown over the last century even into areas clearly accepted as state provinces. To the frustration of 10th Amendment purists, the national government has moved into such areas as public housing, gun control, voter registration, education, and marriage.