are states rights more important than human rights?

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/are-states-rights-more-important-human-rights-1335533471

“If you don’t like it here, move!” This phrase has been used by pundits, politicians, and overzealous religious leaders in the United States for as long as I can remember. It used to be reserved for people who “hate America” but lately it’s taking an ominous turn that prods disenfranchised citizens to become refugees from their own home states. I’ve been seeing it more and more in online comments as the nationwide battle over women’s reproductive rights, gay marriage, race equality, and religious freedom blazes its way through the primary season and into the general election. The popular sentiment appears to be turning toward an America made up of a disjointed patchwork of equality laws. An America where if you don’t “fit in” it’s your own fault. An America where “States’ Rights” reign supreme.

Ron Paul has built much of his grassroots mystique around this notion and it sounds good to people on both sides of the political spectrum that feel their local values shouldn’t be dictated by someone in Washington. It sounds great to everyone but those outside of the local majority. If your faith, color, or sexuality doesn’t match up with regional ideals, that simple notion of “States’ Rights” is a life sentence of oppression, poverty, and abuse. States’ rights is more than a combination of words, it’s a tool used by racists and zealots to, like petulant children, throw fits against the will of the American majority in favor of local traditions.

Perhaps the most famous stand off in States’ Rights was the fallout from Brown vs. The Board of Education. In May of 1957 the Supreme Court declared racially segregated schools to be unconstitutional. In September of that same year nine black students attempted to enter their new High School for the first time. They were met by the Arkansas National Guard blocking their entry on orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower warned the Governor to remove the Guard and comply with the court’s ruling. When he didn’t, Eisenhower deployed the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army to protect those nine children from their state’s own government. I’m proud that on that day our federal authority was able to stand up to Arkansas and meet military force with military force to defend innocent children. I fear a day when we’d have to watch, helpless, as a single state decides to take up arms against its own people again.

[pinto]

1. That's the big picture...

Kick.

[bemildred]

2. Never. nt

[life long demo]

3. Do you know the origin of Dixiecrat.

Dixiecrat, also called States’ Rights Democrat, member of a right-wing Democratic splinter group in the 1948 U.S. presidential election organized by Southerners who objected to the civil rights program of the Democratic Party. It met at Birmingham, Ala., and on July 17, 1948, nominated Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president and Gov. Fielding L. Wright of Mississippi for vice president. The Dixiecrats, who opposed federal regulations they considered to interfere with states’ rights, carried South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, to receive 39 electoral votes; their popular vote totalled over 1,000,000. (from http://www.britannica.com|

After the civil rights act the dixiecrats fled to the repubs and changed the southern states to red states.