States' Rights?

July 2010

States' rights is an issue that's resurfaced recently. It is important to think deeply about it. At the root of it, you have to ask yourself: "The right to do what?"

In the beginning of our nation, the colonies may have wanted the rights to maintain whatever particular customs and laws they had enacted in their years of sovereignty. This was exploited by the southern states in order that they might maintain the institution of slavery, when the rest of the western world had abandoned the heinous practice.  The southern states wanted the right to enslave and torture other humans whose ancestors had been kidnapped from their native lands. This did not weigh on their conscious's, because they could view black people as animals, and not 'real people'.

When the southern states had been forced a century later, at gunpoint, to free their slaves, they then wanted the "right" to deny blacks from gaining any political power by keeping them from voting. When they lost this legislative battle, the southern states wanted the "right" to keep black people segregated in the back of the bus, the back of the restaurant, out of white restrooms, away from white drinking fountains, and out of white schools. They wanted the "right" to enforce second-class citizenship on people whom they despised because they viewed them as less than human; all this, despite being Christians. Southern states had to be forced, again at gunpoint of federal national guardsmen, to treat black people with at least a visible degree of equality.

It is obvious that isolated farming communities and other rural areas don't receive a constant influx of new inhabitants from other lands, bringing new ideas and customs, as do coastal states. Therefore rural areas can be bastions of 'traditions', which is really a way of saying: "We have done things this way for generations, and since we are in the majority, we don't feel like changing anything!" These traditions readily incorporate racism, religious and cultural bigotry, sexism, intolerance and repression. None of these are American ideals. Sometimes, traditions are wrong. Sometimes, traditions should be cast upon the trash heap where they belong.

States Rights is an un-American concept. The Constitution was constructed to protect the rights of the individual against the majority. When I hear the phrase "states rights", I immediately ask myself, "The right to do what?" Usually, the answer is that they want the right to discriminate, the right to repress unpopular lifestyles, the right to assert the dominance of the majority and suppress the minority opinion, and the right to take away the inalienable rights and freedoms of individuals. Beware of state's rights. It's the right to hate, and the right to enforce that hatred through legislation. People have rights, not states.

On a national level, we agree that (in Thomas Jefferson's original words in the Declaration of Independence) "All men are created equal and independent. From that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable."  The federal Constitution keeps states in check, and forces them to do something that they otherwise would not do-- which is to uphold the rights of ALL of their citizens, not just those that are in the majority.