But we
tried that. Before there was the Constitution, the country was governed under a different basic law, the Articles of Confederation (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation), which set up a much weaker central government and reserved nearly all power to the states. It only took a decade or so under the Articles for the whole system to begin to collapse.
The reason why there was a Constitutional Convention in 1787 was because by then leaders in many states had come to the conclusion that the Articles were so disastrously flawed they could not be saved by revision. The only way forward was to throw them out altogether, and replace them with a new system that gave the Federal government the ability to do things like levy taxes and conduct foreign policy. And from that we got the Constitution we all know today.
Fast forward 70 years or so, and the states’ rights idea comes back again, this time in the South. They secede from the Union and set up a new government that establishes states’ rights as a core principle. Secession leads to war, and the new Confederate government finds it can’t effectively fight that war because it lacks the power to establish a single national army or efficiently tax its citizens. “If the Confederacy fails,” Confederate President Jefferson Davis moaned, “there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory.”
The reason why states’ rights is an abandoned concept in American political thought isn’t because it’s never been tried. It’s because it has been tried, multiple times even, and has always led to disaster.
The reason why there was a Constitutional Convention in 1787 was because by then leaders in many states had come to the conclusion that the Articles were so disastrously flawed they could not be saved by revision. The only way forward was to throw them out altogether, and replace them with a new system that gave the Federal government the ability to do things like levy taxes and conduct foreign policy. And from that we got the Constitution we all know today.
Fast forward 70 years or so, and the states’ rights idea comes back again, this time in the South. They secede from the Union and set up a new government that establishes states’ rights as a core principle. Secession leads to war, and the new Confederate government finds it can’t effectively fight that war because it lacks the power to establish a single national army or efficiently tax its citizens. “If the Confederacy fails,” Confederate President Jefferson Davis moaned, “there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory.”
The reason why states’ rights is an abandoned concept in American political thought isn’t because it’s never been tried. It’s because it has been tried, multiple times even, and has always led to disaster.