Statist Struggles With States’ Rights

Constitution,Federalism,Founding Fathers,Neoconservatism,Political Philosophy,The State

            

States across the country are discovering the 10th Amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Quaint, I know, but to the federal government were delegated only limited and enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8). Most everything it does these days is extraconstitutional.

Forced to take fiat currency from the federales, the states also realize that the price is too high to pay: not only must they heed the occupying force, they must bankrupt themselves in the process. For accepting these piles of paper implies expanding services and keeping them going in perpetuity.

So, governors and state representatives are invoking that which ought to have been the law of the land: the ingenious 10th Amendment.

But what happens if you are neoconservative, or have such proclivities, and think that the manner in which Lincoln sundered the federal structure was not only constitutional but moral?

Why, then, you’re in a bit of a pickle. To his credit, Harvard grad Ben Shapiro is a very bright neoconservative, who’s well aware of the contradiction inherent in a sudden support for the states in their rightful reclamation of sovereignty.

See what you think of the tack Shapiro takes:

The federal response to the slavery question was quick and right – President Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War restored for all time the founding promises of the Declaration of Independence. Despite the Civil War, however, the legacy of Jim Crow further eroded the moral authority of states’ rights. And the federal government, wielding the ethical imperative of racial equality, stepped in. States’ rights advocates were forever branded as bigoted Orval Faubus types, standing in the doorways of segregated schoolhouses.

Now states are surprised to find that their ability to resist federal directives has been all but extinguished. They are surprised that they are no longer able to set their own standards regarding social, economic or criminal policy. They are surprised that through a combination of moral blindness and drooling greed, they surrendered their role in the constitutional system.

Surrendered? Not quite.

It would seem that young Ben is equally surprised at the quest for the “reinstitution of local government” (a phrase that diminishes the idea of state sovereignty).

3 thoughts on “Statist Struggles With States’ Rights

  1. Michael Boldin

    Great post, Ilana! If you write a follow up, please don’t hesitate to send it over to me at the Tenth Amendment Center for publication…

    [It sure is a good angle for a column.]

  2. Roger Chaillet

    Ben Shapiro should realize that I knew members of what some might consider the original treason lobby.

    My grade school classmates were the Mudd sisters. They were lineal descendants of Dr. Samuel Mudd. Dr. Mudd was the one who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Mudd
    The local high school is still called Surrattsville High after the Surratt family. Mary Surratt was hanged by a military executioner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Surratt

    That’s why I consider it strange that a neocon would play to type with his cliched view of the 19th century. The slavery of the 19th century is surpassed by the slavery of the 21st century, i.e., illegal immigration. It’s the neocons and their camp followers such as George Bush who support the neo-slavery of this century. And it’s George Bush and others like him who are the most ardent supporters of race-based quotas, preferences, initiatives and set-asides. Shapiro should remember it was Governor Bush who held a press conference years ago denouncing Professor Lino Graglia for Graglia’s remarks about blacks and Hispanics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lino_Graglia

    Now who’s standing in which doorway?

    So, how is that I can see the parallels between the hated white Southerners and George Bush, yet Shapiro cannot?

    States’ rights indeed.

  3. Roy Bleckert

    In my opinion, the states willingly went along with surrendering there rights and gave there power to the federal gov. So it is up the states to take there rights back under the 10th amendment.

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