Is there really good argument for states' rights in 2005?

Various states - decrimination of drug laws
Various states - higher speed limits
Oregon - Assisted suicides
Nevada - gambling and whoring, etc.

But don't the federal agencies swoop in on this?

Another example of where states' rights are unfairly being trod upon by the Feds is with alcohol. Before the early eighties, states set their own laws on what age one could legally drink. Due to pressure from groups like MADD, the Feds blackmailed the states into changing their laws to 21+ by witholding matching federal highway funds. The same thing is happening now with the governement saying that they'll withold money for highways unless everyone lowers their BAC limits down to .08%. Whatever your feelings are on these issues, it's a huge interference by Washington to stick their nose into local issues.

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20050517/capt.maea20305172350.gay_marriage_maea203.jpg?x=256&y=345&sig=z_wI44LPR7KsCWKE4vEgPw--
Massachusetts plaintiff couple Julie, front left, and Hillary Goodridge of Boston, pose for a group photo in Boston, Tuesday, May 17, 2005, to celebrate their first anniversary, one year after Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to recognize same-sex marriages. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

PP and M White OTM. Cuts both ways. Personally, I'm willing to see some of the red states get redder if it means that more liberal states can enact their own policy. Really, the whole idea behind states rights is not so much "fuck the federal gov't!!" as it is the notion that a government should be as *close* to the people as possible. This is why communes work better than Communism.

Just look at the EU. If we ignore the whole "country" thing (which is vastly different, yes), one could argue that the EU is much closer to what the Founding Fathers pictured for America. Like, do whatever the fuck you want over there, I'll do what I want over here, but let's make it easy to trade and, push come to shove, circle the wagons.

(so many x-posts! I gotta write faster)

x-post PP: Word.

At least some of the Founding Fathers, anyway. There were Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

That's a really fucking easy thing to say if you are a white heterosexual.

Fair enough, but upholding that institution would afford more rights for gays (in some places). And those places what *wouldn't* improve are the same places that are blockading gay rights at a federal level anyhow.

I understand that. That was also specificaly removed from the Constitution by the fourteenth amendment. People are currently using states' rights as a justification to restrict and deny peoples' rights.

Kenan OTM. I don't think your sexuality should determine where you need to live in order to have access to all of your rights as a citizen of the United States.

Whoah. I said nothing of the sort. Re-read, plz. What I said above was that gay "marriage" is bunk, just like "real" marriage. Marriage is a "sacred covenant" between two people and should not be legislated. If you're going to give legal breaks for co-habitation, it should be for everyone. As far as red/blue is concerned, I was just pointing out that states rights would vastly accelerate the process in blue states and do little to impede the process in red states (only because they're already impeding it). Furthermore, the moral majority holds sway at the Federal level, so don't even think about making any progress there.

Or the western states who allowed women to vote waaaayyy before 1919.

I do think that the power of the people should be kept as close to the people as possible, as long as no person's rights and freedoms are abridged. If a state breaks that last rule, then it's obviously unconstitutional and should be corrected. States' rights have been the cause for some awful, tragic shit, but so has the Federal governement.

x-post: Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Word. I don't think anyone here is arguing all the way for states rights or central gov't (i'm not at least).

For example, the states led the way to women's suffrage by granting the right to vote decades before the nation did. That was a case of granting expanded rights. Dan is all-too-aware of the sorry record of state's rights in regard to taking rights away from African-Americans. Then again, Oregon has recently expanded the rights of the dying to end their own lives. So the record is mixed there.

The best thing about state's rights is the ability of the states to all mill about doing things their own chosen way in matters where basic rights are not at issue so much as each state choosing how best to skin the same cat - in raising revenue or regulating commerce. For example, Kansas is dry and buttoned down while Nevada is wide open. Freedom in that sphere isn't such a bad idea.

Did you really just have the nerve to fucking compare state-approved racism to the fucking noise board?

Go ahead and sign up for your National ID card with your digital thumbprint, Dan, and be glad that George W. Bush and the Federal Government is doing all that it can for civil rights.

I like how, as more and more liberal Americans have begun posting to ILE, I have felt like the board is more hostile towards me. Really makes me glad to be here.

States' Rights rhetoric has been used to try and prevent the Fed. govt. from interfering in state sponsored racism but that doesn't mean that it's the only meaning of states' rights. The Constitution says that all rights not enumerated in it devolve to the states or the people.

There is absolutely nothing negative toward you in my defense of states' rights and I agree with many above that when it is used to deny people basic rights it is despicable and misleading. Why however, must you let the racists win by only equating states' rights with southern bigotry, or rather, why will you let their hatred cloud your judgment of a function of the U.S. Constitution which allows for regional diversity and 50 laboratories for policy?

anyway -- a banal point: like any human institution, government is only as good as its constituents. "states' rights" in a stateful of hippies (vermont, say) is going to be a very different thing that states' rights in a stateful of christian fundamentalists (say, alabama). likewise, as bushco has driven home over the past 4.5 years, a strong federal government controlled by right-wing wackos is hardly ideal.

(xpost)

The Democrats aren't losing to the Republicans, they're giving up. Nice one.

I think we shouldn't fool ourselves and call our country the Divided States Of America as is. States' rights enacted or not, it's already a given that certain states critically oppose others on basic civil rights issues, culture, etc. In a more complicated sense, we're a hybrid of that and the Urban Cities Of America against The Rural Outback Of America... as we continue to follow the cliché of "those of a same feather flock together", we're getting far tighter and more populous congregations of "blue cities" versus the "red rural outback". It just depends in where the "blue cities" have more power than the "red rural outback" and vice versa in each state. States' right will only codify that division, and will make laws in this country very hard to describe. It would have a humongous impact on our country in the sense that our states would start to resemble subcountries...

Why is this a problem?.. Well, for starters, national security. When it comes time to bring up issues that threaten this part of the continent, which states get which funding? I'd hate for any president of the Divided States Of America to use partison politics to give funding to states he (or she) deems more worthy of them (Democrat or Republican.) What of our stockpile of weapons? What about energy pipelines? What about oil pipelines (while they last)?

States' rights will make states bicker at each other more regarding these basic issues, as each will rise on a higher pedestal, as each becomes more distinct over time. That certainly won't help the basics. While it would be great for a more "hippie" state to have more freedom to flip the bird at a more conservative federal government and pass its own laws, there are ways the feds could "get back" at that hippie state. Similarly, a liberal fed government could do the same to a "christian fundie" state.

(Notice I'm not mentioning the racial issues or gay civil liberties issues yet.)

anyway, I got to eat.. I'm sure there are holes in my argument somewhere.. I'll get to them later.

as long as people are free to move and had some basic, unrevocable rights, it might not be horrible.

Free to move? Is that like being free to shut the fuck up? Free to get the fuck out if you don't like it? Charming.

That's what bothers me most about the argument -- the rights of the minority seems like it will be the first tenet of democracy to go out the window.

When it comes to civil rights, life and death, and the defense of our nation, then yes. The Federal Government should be there to protect these things.

However, the Federal Government has no buisness nosing into the buisness of whether or not a state can decriminalize marijuana, raise speed limits, ban radar detectors, set liquor laws, have a state income tax, put deposits on their cans and bottles, require a blood test before marriage, legalize prostitution, legalize gambling, strengthen gun-control laws, decalare holidays for Casmir Pulaski, set tolls for state highways, hold Saturday elections, force motorcylists to wear helmets, open K-Marts on Sundays, issue driver's licenses to sixteen-year olds, pay residents for their oil pipeline, decide how to divvy up its school districts or congressional districts, cast its electoral votes, have one house in the legislature or two, enable banks to mortgage real estate, call itself a "right-to-work" state, ban smoking from public restaurants, let the blind hunt, stay on Standard Time all year long, or declare the ivory-billed woodpecker as the state bird.

Jim Crow doesn't fit under any of that because it deprieved Americans of their fundamental rights. Dixiecrats wrongly used the term "states' rights" as their excuse to continue those archaic and horrible laws, even though there wasn't one thing right about them.

x-post

Well, "Republican" and "right wing" are very flexible terms, as we've seen over a long period of time.

fair point. of course this happens already. there's a reason certain people move to certain states. or to canada. etc.

?
m.

It's been talked about, though we're probably going to keep our beloved mockingbird as the top bird.

And if Asa Hutchinson gets elected, we'll have our own peckerwood!

Does it have any business putting conditions on that sweet, sweet, sweet Federal money that it might allocate?

The days when conservatives could dream about selectively pruning the federal budget tree are long past. We're staring at a massive economic readjustment over the next 20 years or so. Fantasizing about lopping off the DOE is fiddling amidst the flames of Rome.

I call it blackmail, myself.

Venice?

"Tsunami? tens of thousands dead? Oh, yeah, that's right. That did happen then, eh?"

What does? Helvetic Confederation?

The New Republic. Also, Banana Republic.

I don't want my southern bigot state to have southern bigot marriage/drug/right-to-death laws! Give me a pinko gummit, dammit!

...haven't there been, like, three threads on this already? Someone--I forget who, blount?--neatly diced the US into some like 12 states or something. Hilarious and insightful.

xxx...xxx-post: The whole "cutting off the funds" is exactly the problem with "strong" central gov't, some would say. NY or Cali would have every right to outraged if, being two of the wealthier states and thus filling much of the pot, the Gummint shut off the utilities and said you can't smoke weed.

Like PP said above, there are just some things the Fed shouldn't have anything to do with anymore.

(tangent: the legal driving age is just as wily and complex as the age of consent (or the drinking age), in my opinion. I knew farm kids that could drive safely and well at 15 and air-head city kids that didn't get their licenses until they were 20 that were the WORST drivers I'd ever met...)

It's not the sort of thing that can be "imposed," which is how we seem to have been conceiving of it so far on this thread. The Federal govt. is simply not going to wake up one day and decide it's a good idea to give lots of power and authority away.

Plus, you don't just automatically rediscover/invent a coherent cultural/economic/political entity that is so.... SOUTH DAKOTAN that it must necessarily burst the legal bounds it's previously occupied. Our "states" are just big counties, not like "nation-states," which is sort of how the COnstitution imagined them.

But I was thinking last night about how it seems like Europe is the real melting pot now, the real "stew" of the world, and America isn't. They're not exactly united in Europe, but they are proper "states".

Even assuming perfect function of the Federal government per the Constitutional plan, I'm not sure separation of powers is the best justification for dismissing a claimed need for state's rights. I think a better argument might be that state's rights frustrate equal protection and Constitutional rights and benefits.
When allegiances to political parties outstrip loyalty to one's actual Constitutionally mandated job, things get hairy. Hi, Bill Frist!

I'd like to see drugs legalized just to see if any of the pro state's rights libertarians suddenly don't give a shit about them anymore. Well, I'd also like to see (some) drugs legalized on principle too.

xpost

The filibuster hoo-ha is a pathetic indictment of how impossible it is for our "political thinkers" to imagine a creative solution to the powerlessness of minority parties in the American system. They have to rely on this literally absurdist, Ionescoesque arcanum. It's the best we've got but we ain't got a lot.

xpost

I guess my tribute to the founders is that so many people are such fucking bastards, I'm amazed we haven't broken this system yet. And also, it's because the founders WERE revolutionaries. Were any systems instituted before the 20th century so successfully counter-majoritarian?

The political thinkers have thought of plenty of ways to empower minority parties. It's not a failure of imagination, it's a disagreement over what is an appropriate allocation of power, and even more, the successfully applied power of entrenched interests.

And surely both the Democrats and the Republicans represent "entrenched interests," they're just quite different constellations of interests, in quite different, uh, trenches.

Since you said that, you know the deal.

There are other ways to empower minority parties, but they aren't in the Constitution, and they aren't in the Senate rules. They exist in political science texts and other nations constitutions. Folks know about them though. It takes a lot to amend the Constitution that way, or a new Consitutional Convention, which would be 52 pick-up. Given that Congress won't serve french fries and conservatives are calling for J. Kennedy's impeachment for mentioning international law, I don't think we're gonna incorporate any new ideas into our system right now. We're all about the good really old ideas, like the shining purity of the invisible handjob of the market.

Why a big deal? It's the Supreme Court first, it looms.

xpost

Yes, that's entirely reasonable, but that's a pretty high standard for that lot. We've got a de facto 60 vote reqm't through cloture rules obv.

I'm interested to see how Reid proceeds to shut down the Senate in the wake of rule "change."