States' Rights Mask the Desire to Do Wrong

by: Mike Lux

Tue Mar 30, 2010 at 11:12

"They tried it here in Arkansas in '57 and it didn't work," Gov. Mike Beebe (D) told reporters recently. "I think you got to tell people the truth. And if I understand the law, the truth is the federal government can't just be defied by the state governments."

The analogy to the Little Rock school segregation case in 1957 was on target, and it is no surprise at all that the current resurgence in talk about states' rights comes at a time when we have just passed the biggest change in federal legislation since the civil rights victories of the 1960s.

More in the extended entry.

Debate over the powers granted to the federal government and the powers granted to the states had  been part of the American political dialogue since the revolution itself. Revolutionary-era leaders were justifiably nervous about too much power being vested in the federal government because they had never lived in a democracy, and their experience with King George and government power in England wasn't exactly positive. The Articles of Confederation was the ultimate pro-states' rights document in its complete decentralization of power. But the Articles didn't work very well, and the new constitution written in 1787 gave the federal government far more power to get things done. There was still a balance struck between the state and federal power, though, and there was still plenty of room to debate who was the best to lead in what area. Those arguments didn't have much of an ideological cast sin the nation's first four decades though- conservatives like Adams and progressives like Jefferson argued on both sides of the fence depending on the given issue.

Calhoun changed all that in the 1830s. He realized that the North's economy and population were growing and the South's was stagnating, and that the abolition movement was gaining ground in the North. He also understood that to keep slaves from hearing about new ideas and getting stirred up about their freedom, Bill of Rights protections in terms of freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion would have to be ignored in the South.

As I write in my book:

Calhoun posited, more than a little ironically, that states' rights was the only remedy against minorities' rights being trampled by the majority; that is, that the poor trampled-on Southern white slave owner's minority rights would be overrun by those nasty Northern abolitionists. His South Carolina Exposition, published in 1828 (before the major tariff crisis with Jackson), said that any state could annul any federal law and mentioned both tariffs and slavery as examples of issues where the rights of Southerners might need to be protected. In subsequent writings and speeches over the next two decades, Calhoun denounced both abolitionists and democracy. He wrote that rule by a majority was "but government of the strongest interests... [which] when not efficiently checked is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised."

Aware that the North's economy and population were growing much faster than those of the stagnant South, Calhoun became virulently opposed to democracy itself: "The will of the majority is the will of a rabble. Progressive democracy is incompatible with liberty." The only solution to the growing numerical power of the North, he said, was that states should have the "right of self-protection," that is, nullification and secession.

Calhoun's political theories became the basis for Southern resistance regarding slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. And he  became a hero to conservatives for all time.

Every violation of black civil rights in the South, every lynching, every denial of voting rights, every beating or jailing of a civil rights worker was justified by the states' rights doctrine. As painful and wrenching as change was, though, it finally happened. Those who argued states' rights to justify every wrong were defeated, politically and philosophically, and our country progressed. Now more big change is happening. We have a new civil right established by law, the right to health care coverage. And once again Calhoun-inspired conservatives are coming out of the woodwork to claim states' rights as the excuse to strike down this new civil right.

The American political debate keeps getting recycled. How seriously do we take that whole "all men are created equal" thing? Do we base our economy more on big business and trickle-down economics, or more on investing in the hopes and dreams of regular working people? Do we expand our civil rights or contract them? And do we let small-minded politicians in the states perpetuate wrongs against their citizens by invoking states' rights? The fight over these questions goes back to our early days, and it continues today. I'm glad we are living in a historical moment where those of us on the progressive side of those questions have a chance to make progress happen.