It’s amazing how often “states‘ rights” comes up historically with regard to slavery and black civil rights, but almost never in any other context. It’s almost

It’s amazing how often “states‘ rights” comes up historically with regard to slavery and black civil rights, but almost never in any other context. It’s almost like it was just a convenient legal tool to protect white supremacy, and once it failed they’d break the law, up to and including murder and treason to protect it. And after the war they used it again to bring it back and protect white supremacy from then until today. People who argue for morally contemptible positions often couch them in process arguments, which they will then argue against when turned against them — such as when northern states, for example, didn’t want to return fugitive slaves. Don’t let people change the subject when they want to argue for the continuation of a grotesque and immoral practice because of some abstract legal principle. If the principle of “states‘ rights“ permits slavery and segregation and apartheid, then that’s a condemnation of the concept of states’ rights. Either it needs to be formulated in such a way that it doesn’t permit atrocities to continue, or it needs to be jettisoned.