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phantom power

(25,966 posts)
Fri Jun 6, 2014, 10:27 AM Jun 2014

"States Rights" -- James Buchanan in the 21st Century

Worth reading the whole thing.

Regular customers to this shebeen know that I am somewhat bughouse on the Morrill Act, and those measures that flowed from it, the legislation that made possible the system of land-grant colleges in what were then very new states, and provided us some of our finest college football powers into the bargain, although I am fairly certain that Senator Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont did not have the Chick-Fil-A Bowl in mind when he began his long fight to establish a system of higher education that would benefit the sons and daughters and grandchildren of Wisconsin loggers and Nebraska sodbusters. But, recently, while doing some research, I happened to go through the legislative history of the Morrill Act again and, in doing so, I once again was reminded of the one thing about which we can be certain about our politics -- almost none of our most virulent political arguments is truly new. Most of them flow from the original debates within the Constitutional Convention, especially the endless pulling-and-hauling over the concept of "states rights," which quickly morphed from a learned dispute over the shape and role of government to the basic constitutional justification for the continuation of the slave power. In fact, the latter purpose wasn't far from the debate from the outset. The compromise that produced the 3/5ths Rule, which probably made ratification of the Constitution possible, fastened the slave power to the states rights argument in what seemed like perpetuity.

States rights loosed something else into the country's political bloodstream that we still see manifest today. From the beginning of the country, in their attempts to maintain their peculiar institution, the Southern states inculcated in themselves a distrust of Northern money and Northern education, which they saw not only as a vehicle for regional dominance, but also, as the Southern states increasingly saw all forms of progress, a threat to the slave economy. This kind of cultural know-nothing populism spread west as well, although, because there was little or no slavery practiced officially in what were then called the western states, most of the populist resistance to new ideas was rooted in a distrust of the admittedly sharp (and not altogether honest) practices of Eastern money and Eastern bankers.

...

The problem, of course, was that Abraham Lincoln wasn't president yet. James Buchanan was. And the debate over the Morrill Act has a lot to it that echoes down through our current dysfunctional national legislature. For example, there was more than a little anti-science sneering at Morrill's attempt to make higher education available to the nation's yeoman farmers and their children. Historian Neal Harl quotes a Minnesota Democratic senator named Henry Mower Rice snarking Bachmannishly at the whole notion:

"We want no fancy farmers, no fancy mechanics," said Senator Rice of Minnesota, while Senator Mason of Virginia railed, "‘It is one of the most extraordinary engines of mischief...misusing the property of the country...an unconstitutional robbing of the Treasury for the purpose of bribing the States."


As with almost every national issue, slavery shadowed this debate as well. (It is not insignificant that one of Morrill's staunchest allies in this fight was Thaddeus Stevens, the implacable Pennsylvania abolitionist, who answered the nastiness directed at the more mild-mannered Morrill with his own not inconsiderable talent for invective.) The frame of the debate was about the "role" of the federal government, but the undeniable subtext was that, if the federal government could do this, if it could build roads and canals and universities, then it could abolish slavery if it wanted to. And President Buchanan, trying mightily to stave off the inevitable conflagration, gave in and vetoed the bill. His veto message could have been read word for word at CPAC on a panel about the evils of the Affordable Care Act.

...

The Morrill Act did not become law until 1862, when most of the states that most vigorously had opposed it were in rebellion against the Union. I mention this only to point out that no political argument is altogether new, and to point out that, from the Articles of Confederation onwards, at almost every point in our history, the idea that the United States is a collection of sovereign states has been morally destructive and politically retrograde. Adherence to states-rights philosophy has been intellectually crippling, and in most case, has hobbled national progress on everything from education policy to transportation infrastructure. It is often said by hopeful liberals that Dwight Eisenhower couldn't get nominated by the current Republican party. Well, there's no way that James Buchanan still could be a Democrat, either. But he might just run a strong second in the 2016 Iowa Republican caucuses.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/James_Buchanan_Speaks_To_Our_Time
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"States Rights" -- James Buchanan in the 21st Century (Original Post) phantom power Jun 2014 OP
kick for Charles Pierce phantom power Jun 2014 #1
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