What States Rights?

Do you see anything wrong in the graphic? It’s right there in your face; perhaps too obvious.

It’s a political statement by someone who considers himself a super patriot.

Some untutored person quite inappropriately has attached the words “States Rights” to a picture of the Constitution. Untutored? Inappropriate? Sadly.

That sentiment has been proclaimed so loudly and frequently that most think it a truism. Absolute nonsense. States have no rights. People have rights. That does not include corporations, just actual flesh and blood people.

Does that contradict everything you have ever heard on the subject? Probably. The ignorant have practically cornered the market. However, ubiquity is not proof of truth.

Below the red white and blue we find the visually bland, the lackluster but far more important Constitution. What does it say? As I read it, it begins on the most important point, “We the People.” What? It doesn’t say, “We the States?” I bet there is a reason. I would bet that those crafting this venerable document created it exactly this way for a specific reason.

Who do you believe? The Founding Fathers or the clowns pictured with signs prominently betraying that one of their primary points of focus is the predominance of their personal pecuniary position?

Are they the ones you will look to for guidance on the meaning of the Constitution?

Almost all of these ersatz tea party minions affiliate themselves with the Republican Party. They seem blithely insensible of the history of that party, as well.

Abraham Lincoln, in his message to the Congress for the 4^th of July, 1861 proclaimed, “The Union is older than any of the states; and, in fact, it created them as States. Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of ‘States rights’ . . . Much is said about the ‘sovereignty’ of the States; but the word, even, is not in the national Constitution.”

Then the Constitution says, “in Order to create a more perfect Union, . . . promote the general Welfare (boy, does that twist their tea bags) . . . [The People] do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” It wasn’t the states. It wasn’t the corporations. It was the people.

Think about it. Why was the Constitution created and adopted? One simple and, except to the expert anti-historians, and the intentionally forgetful, obvious imperative brought our founders together for this purpose. The Articles of Confederation were a disaster. Giving the various states their heads resulted in floundering, in confusion, in internecine strife, in weakness, in stalemate, in an untenable, unsupportable situation for all of the states, separately and in various combinations.

The very goal of the Constitution was to unite the various entities in a workable whole by creating a central government and providing it the power, the wherewithal to command compliance from the states.

Who is it that touts states rights as desirable? It was the slave states. It is the recalcitrant, those against the present and the future. Those trying to re-segregate, those wishing to tear down the separation of church and state, those trying to thwart the handiwork of the Founding Fathers by disuniting the nation.

Living here in a southern state, it is not uncommon to hear rants that the Civil War failed to resolve the ‘question’ of states rights. These are the people who, to this day, glorify the treason that caused that tragedy. And they have the gall and the ignorance to portray themselves as the true patriots, the true Americans.

To repeat myself, states have no rights. Also, the national government has no rights. People have rights. Governments, local, state and national have obligations. They also have authorities granted by the people. Recall the crux of the Declaration of Independence, ” . . . Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

While on the subject of the Constitution, I would like to clear up another matter for such constitutional dullards as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They are in error when they call themselves strict constructionist and pretend that they honor ‘original intent.’ They abide by original intent only when it suits their prejudices or can be twisted to seem so. Rarely do they actually color inside the lines of original intent.

The intent of the Founding Fathers is laid out in the Federalist Papers, public statements and private letters. Their intent was give us a document that could be changed to correct defects and adapt to new contingencies. Indeed, mechanisms for alteration are embedded in the document itself.

Original intent was not an unalloyed abstraction or object. There was little unanimity among our illustrious forbearers. Were we to hold rigorously to the strictures and liberalities of the Constitution, slavery would continue to be legal; the ladies would not have suffrage. It would be a far different country. Original intent is a ludicrous concept that has no intellectual or historical support. As with states rights, it is a play toy for mental midgets.

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