When I was a kid, with only a superficial interest in politics, I gathered that "states' rights" were something you wouldn't bring in the house, a slogan of southern rednecks who hadn't been reconciled to outlawing slavery. Nothing I read had a kind word to say for the concept.
Maybe states' rights were a Bad Thing back then, or being promoted for wrong purposes. Lately, however, I've come to see the concept in a very different light, as I've been forced to recognize the incredible wisdom of the Constitution's plain statement that all powers not specifically enumerated as belonging to the federal government belonged to the states and the people.
It's been especially obvious since the federal government, including the president, a large percentage of the Congress, and the judiciary have decided on our behalf that a mass migration of unlettered, impoverished, and non-English-speaking Third Worlders is just what the United States needs.
Having observed at close hand some of the less savory results of the invasion, and it being abundantly evident that much more of the same was in store unless countermeasures were taken, states and localities have begun to do the job that Americans in the federal government won't do. The Kansas City Star reports:
Citing an “unnatural influx” of illegal immigrants, [Missouri] Gov. Matt Blunt on Monday ordered state troopers to start checking the immigration status of every person they arrest. …The federal government has failed to act to curtail illegal immigration, and it’s time for Missouri to do something, he said.
(Tip of the hat: Mike Tuggle at Rebellion.)
Machiavelli, I believe, said that diseases in government are like diseases in the body: hard to discover while they are still curable, and after they become evident, hard to cure. The disease that has taken hold of our federal government is by now entirely visible. I am coming more and more to think that only local governments, still relatively subject to the will of the people, offer much chance of a cure.
States' rights redivivus? Bring 'em on.
Machiavelli, I believe, said that diseases in government are like diseases in the body: hard to discover while they are still curable, and after they become evident, hard to cure. The disease that has taken hold of our federal government is by now entirely visible. I am coming more and more to think that only local governments, still relatively subject to the will of the people, offer much chance of a cure.
States' rights redivivus? Bring 'em on.
4 comments:
Unfortunately the feds hold most of the real power. Besides that, the large number of sanctuary cities demonstrates that our state and local governments are as deeply complicit in this invasion as the feds are.
tanstaafl,
You're quite right that many local governments, mainly in large cities with heavy concentrations of ethnic populations and academic liberals, have done their bit to make things worse. Still, if there is a chance to turn things around, it is more likely to gather momentum in a number of localities and states than at the federal level.
Sometimes I wish this country could be partitioned into two, so that people who believe in open borders could have their country and the rest of us have ours. Perhaps unfortunately, there is no practicable way to bring that about.
I agree with both of your points.
The two countries are forming, slowly, as people like myself "migrate", many unconsciously, away from the places worst hit by immigration. I'm deliberately looking not just for a "nice" place but a place that looks like it will be on the right side of the divide 10 years from now.
We'll still have that little problem of a civil war of course. The open borders nation will not want to lose all its most valuable people no more than the more populated North wanted to lose the South.
WV looks very interesting. For all the "poverty" it seems fabulously wealthy in regard to the attributes I'm looking for.
Flanders Fields had some good caveats on any sort of states' rights proposal in a comment on one of my old posts. It sounds good, but with modern mobility, it's very difficult to enforce certain laws that would attempt to make one state different from another.
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