[Southern Federalist]

In 1948 "States Rights" meant one thing: the right of the states to enforce racial segregation. If you really believe that Strom was worried about the Department of Agriculture intruding on state cotton planting regulations or something, you are delusive.

As cited in Robert George's NRO column today, here is what was printed on the sample ballot for the Dixiecrats in Mississippi:

"A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vote for passage of Truman's so-called civil rights program in the next Congress. This means the vicious…anti-poll tax, anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever."

If you can find me documentation that "states' rights" had any other content in the 1948 Dixiecrat Campaign besides the poll tax, lynching, and segregation, please provide it.

It might be worth taking a look at the civil rights plank in the '48 regular Democratic platform:

The Democratic Party is responsible for the great civil rights gains made in recent years in eliminating unfair and illegal discrimination based on race, creed or color.

The Democratic Party commits itself to continuing its efforts to eradicate all racial, religious and economic discrimination.

We again state our belief that racial and religious minorities must have the right to live, the right to work, the right to vote, the full and equal protection of the laws, on a basis of equality with all citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution.

We highly commend President Harry S. Truman for his courageous stand on the issue of civil rights.

We call upon the Congress to support our President in guaranteeing these basic and fundamental American Principles: (1) the right of full and equal political participation; (2) the right to equal opportunity of employment; (3) the right of security of person; (4) and the right of equal treatment in the service and defense of our nation.

These are all basically equal protection issues, not equal outcome issues. The issue of public accomodations is not even mentioned. As Clint Bolick has pointed out, from the 1860's to the beginning of the 1960's "equal opportunity of employment" as a civil rights goal meant overturning state regulations that artifically barred or hindered blacks from entering certain occupations; it did not mean racial quotas.

Besides, "state's rights" is not a conservative cause. Conservatives are concerned with the rights of human beings, not the rights of the state. "States' rights" is a phrase that has been abused for decades to mean the right of the state to take away individual freedom from people with the wrong skin color or parentage. That is what "states' rights" certainly meant in Strom's campaign in 1948. An enemy of human freedom is an enemy of human freedom, and that is what Strom was in '48. He outgrew it, and he should be commended for that, not for his earlier advocacy of tyranny.

The old Southern Democrats were the biggest statists around. From the point of view of liberty, a state-government statist is no better than a federal-government statist. Sometimes it is the proper function of the Federal government to restrain state-level statism in order to ensure American citizens the equal protection of the laws.

[GilesB]

So - in spite of what you see today, you eagerly buy the Democrat's spin? The Dixiecrat plank opposed the laws - what was it about the laws that they opposed? I freely admit that I don't know....but when history tells me of an "anti-lynching" law put forth by the same folks who are now pushing "hate crime" laws, it makes me suspicious. I am fairly confident that your blanket statement of what State's Rights meant then is about as accurate as those today who try to saddle Bush as a racist because he opposed "hate crime" laws.

TODAY, the only thing you and others want anybody to know about "State's Rights" is the ugly racist environment of the South at the time. You make it sound like the only issues were racial issue - SORRY - not true. But racism and the fight against it are all you were taught and all you remember. State's Rights are about the Constitution, about the sovereignty of the States in our republic and a struggle against the crushing impositions of a nanny state. Someone who calls themselves "Southern Federalist" should understand that.

If State's Rights disappear (and they largely have), you get silly, national 55 mph speed limit laws and individual rights are not far behind - because once the Federal Government has demonstrated its ability to make a state toe the line, it is a simple matter to make all the peon inhabitants of those states also toe the line.

The issues of poll tax, lynching, Jim Crow should have been fought simply as constitutional issues instead of by an imposition of federal law. The desired results would have been achieved, with less chance of the huge expansion of federal power that occured in the 30s and 40s and later in the 60s. While the underlying philosophy of restricting federal power was sound a worthy, the opponents of State's Rights were successful in reshaping the debate into strictily racial tones (granted, with marvelous help from some supremely stupid and ugly southerners). They were so successful then that today a person who goes by the name "Southern Federalist" can write: "In 1948 'States Rights' meant one thing: the right of the states to enforce racial segregation."

It is the job of the Supreme Court to restrain "state-level statism". Federal statism is NOT justified by fighting state statism. Most of the destruction of our Constitution has occured with that very justification. State statism IS different than Federal statism in that the state is more localized, less powerful and therefor more easily escaped, fought and/or changed. If we have to have one or the other, I'll choose state statism every time!

It may be that Strom Thurmond was an "enemy of human freedom" in 1948, but his candidacy as a Dixicrat is NOT irrefutable evidence of such.