On States’ Rights and Moderate Conservatism

In this time of rapidly changing social conditions and a somewhat painful removal of our self-comforting delusions of morality, it’s time we start talking seriously about how we misuse words.

One of the most abused and misused phrases in modern American conversation is “states’ rights.”  The civil war wasn’t about slavery, it was about “states’ rights.”  It was the War of Northern Aggression, how dare those Washington Bigshots tell us fine, genteel people how to live our lives.  Every time the Confederate Flag, or the civil war, or slavery is mentioned, at some point someone will try to cloak themselves in the ostensibly noble trappings of “defending states’ rights.”

Advocates of this argument, however, never seem to want to discuss the marked tendency of “states’ rights” arguments to fall on the side of “let states oppress people however they want, and make sure the federal government doesn’t have the teeth to stop them,” since that was after all the original point?

Why is it when people want to own other people, keep some people from attending public school, force women to be brood mares, declare certain types of consensual adult non-commercial sex illegal, or teach religious myths as science, it’s suddenly about “states’ rights?”

I notice nobody was hollering about “States’ rights” when the PATRIOT act was passed.

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument about allowing abortions beyond the guidelines established at the federal level.

Never heard anyone suggest that regulating social behavior under the glare of a deadly global pandemic was a “state’s right,” even though the feds have completely blown every single chance they had to work the bully pulpit and explain to people why it’s so important.

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument favoring gay marriage even though that’s precisely what that issue has come down to.

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument that states be allowed to demand that only science – rather than religious myths – be taught in public school science classes.

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument favoring strong social welfare programs.

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument favoring a higher minimum wage (although, again, that’s precisely what it’s come down to).

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument favoring strong environmental protection.

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument about abolishing the death penalty.

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument against media consolidation.

Never heard anyone make a “states’ rights” argument supporting polygamy – indeed, for Utah to even *become* a state they had to explicitly outlaw that practice.

Never heard anyone argue for a state’s right to refuse to privatize their prison systems. It’s been done – again, Utah for one – but nobody used that argument to rationalize it.

Never heard anyone argue for a state’s right to forbid charter schools.

Never heard anyone argue for a state’s right to do a whole lot of really good, positive things…just for a state’s right to screw average people in favor of profit for the elite.

About the only positive states’ rights arguments I’ve ever heard in my life – a long life full of political awareness – have been in favor of legalizing cannabis.

Meanwhile, where were the moderate conservative voices leading up to the Iraq war?

Where are the moderate conservative voices in the gay marriage debate?

Where are the moderate conservative voices in the cannabis legalization debate?

Where are the moderate conservative voices curtailing the Texas board of education’s headlong rush into theocracy?

Where are the moderate conservative voices calling for the US to catch up to the rest of the civilized world in terms of health care or education or criminal justice?

Where are the moderate conservative voices opposing unjustified war-making?

Where are moderate conservative voices favoring penal code reform, ending discriminatory law enforcement practices, ending employment discrimination and wage disparity, ending the enslavement and oppression that results from people not having access to health care?

Where are the moderate conservative voices supporting arts education and public broadcasting?

Where are the moderate conservative voices supporting organized labor?

Where are the moderate conservative voices supporting a woman’s right to decide for herself whether to carry a pregnancy to term?

Where are the moderate conservative voices supporting the right of gay people to marry?

Where are the moderate conservative voices supporting environmental regulation?

Where are the moderate conservative voices opposing wealth disparity?

Where are the moderate conservative voices opposing wage disparity based on gender and race?

Where are the moderate conservative voices that recognize the vested interest of government in preventing parents from destroying the minds of their children with corporal punishment and religious indoctrination?

Where are the moderate conservatives supporting OSHA and FEMA and the CDC and the Department of Education?  These are all well-established institutions; conservatives should be working to preserve and protect them, but it seems like all they’re interested in protecting is dog-whistle statues honoring bigots, claiming the Confederacy as their “heritage” in spite of the reality that most of the people making that claim had nothing to do with the Confederacy, nor did their forebears.

Where are the moderate conservatives who can respect and address a topic at hand rather than flying off on a self-indulgent pity party about how unfair it is that they’re labeled as conservatives at all, yet failing to recognize that they’re openly admitting that being called conservative is an egregious insult these days?

Even those conservatives who seem less obnoxious and more willing to take a principled stand on important issues in opposition to their home-field narrative aren’t particularly moderate – people like John McCain or Mitt Romney – aren’t really all that moderate; they’re just not frothing xenophobic whackjobs 24/7 so they look moderate in comparison to the mainstream right.

The reality that these self-described moderate conservatives are overlooking is simply this:  conservatism as it is currently defined in this country can not be moderate and is not conservative.  There’s simply nothing moderate about imposing theocracy, creating or enforcing laws that define people as second-class citizens based on their sexuality, sanctioning murder under the guise of vengeance pretending to be justice, forcing women to carry the pregnancies caused by their rapists to term, prosecuting war for profit, spending half the GDP on the military, giving business and industry carte blanche to convert the republic into a feudal state, or indoctrinating children to be consumers first and citizens last.

The last moderate conservative to actually win an election was Barack Obama…and of course, rather than being properly labeled as a moderate conservative – which he unquestionably is, ever major decision by his administration supports that and he’s defined himself that way more than once – he’s a “radical socialist liberal.”

Maybe if this mass of moderate conservatives who only seem to have something to say when they want to complain about how conservatism has branded itself for the last thirty years would speak up about anything other than having their feelings hurt by generalities about the right wing, I’d have more sympathy.  Maybe if the “states’ rights” argument was ever used to justify doing the right thing, it would have more legitimacy.