It was never supposed to be an easy ride. The various states, each with their own quirks and personalities and goals, had agreed to join together, but only for limited purposes—banding together mostly to protect their rights from violators within and without the Union. They were not signing up in order to give away their routine powers of self-rule to a central government. Each would continue to rule its own affairs, except when it came to those limited purposes behind the Union. As summarized in the Preamble to our Constitution, those purposes were these:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Preamble to the united states constitution. ratified in 1789.
The States never intended to let the administration of right and wrong within their respective borders pass out of their own hands and into the hands of a monolithic central government. That was not the point of what they were doing.
But the point has been largely lost between now and then. Indeed, when it comes to the current outlook of Americans, I ask you this: how many among us today would even want to live in an independent state that made its own decisions on how life should be lived there? Not many, it seems. We don’t generally tend to think that way anymore. Rather, we have accepted the yoke of one-size-fits-all nationalism again and again, and have grown quite comfortable in doing as we are told from on high. We have generally forgotten that there was ever any other habit in play here.
Are the States still different from one another? Of course, they are. But those differences are far smaller than they used to be, because the central government has usurped more and more power since 1789, to the point where far too many Americans even realize there’s anything wrong with Congress passing some Union-wide law about the morality of this or that. The Union was not formed to legislate the morality of the people, but to legislate the working together of the States for those limited purposes detailed in the Constitution.
was held in February 1790, though with no cases to hear.
Had the Supreme Court pulled a Roe v. Wade stunt in 1790, I suspect they would have been overrun by a mob and their building burned down, as a great many Americans were still quite uneasy about any powers handed over to a central government, and would have been especially upset about such an excess of power from the brand new Supreme Court.
The system that evolved during the drafting and ratification of the new Constitution had made it inevitable that there were going to be some really rocky disagreements among the sister states when it came to how they would conduct themselves in matters that were outside the limited purposes of this Union. If one state wanted slavery, and another didn’t, that was how it was going to be. If one wanted liquor and another didn’t, that was how it was going to be. If one wanted homosexuality and another didn’t, that was how it was going to be. Again, it was understood by all that it was not the business of the central government to interfere in such matters.
And now we have returned, it seems, to that same same status of state-independence when it comes to the question of abortion. Each state is free to decide for itself again. (They always had this right, actually, but having forgotten their history, were buffaloed into thinking that the Supreme Court had any power to say otherwise.) And so we shall see what happens from here forward.
Surely, there will continue to be players who cross the line—who do not respect the rights of states to determine their own paths, and who will try this or that to bring the matter once again under a unilateral nationalist rule. Indeed, when has there ever not been somebody doing this? Central power is intoxicating—and so much so that those who are drunk with it lose sight of the fact that they are violating the rights of all the people in their states when they seek to build the powers of the central government by stealing power from the States.
We should not be surprised at either the disagreements between the philosophies of the States on how they should conduct their business, nor at the madness of those who want to abuse the central government by having it take over the powers of the States to decide for themselves. It’s what you get when you have a high-minded plan of government installed over a low-minded people and run by power-hungry cheaters. That is, that’s what you get when the principles upon which your government were founded require philosophical distinctions that the average joe is not likely to be making regularly in his own mind, and that the rich and powerful don’t want to make because they can profit from ignoring the rules.
The American people were never great at this from the beginning, but we were certainly better at it in that first half-century or so than we are now. In the 1830s, the French author, Alexis de Tocqueville observed the following about Americans, and I dare say he would observe no such thing if he were to visit us again today. I’ve pasted a meaty excerpt below for those who might like to ponder the change in the American mindset about civics from then until now. (Emphasis added)
I have lived a great deal with the people in the United States, and I cannot express how much I admire their experience and their good sense. An American should never be allowed to speak of Europe; for he will then probably display a vast deal of presumption and very foolish pride. He will take up with those crude and vague notions which are so useful to the ignorant all over the world. But if you question him respecting his own country, the cloud which dimmed his intelligence will immediately disperse; his language will become as clear and as precise as his thoughts. He will inform you what his rights are, and by what means he exercises them; he will be able to point out the customs which obtain in the political world. You will find that he is well acquainted with the rules of the administration, and that he is familiar with the mechanism of the laws. The citizen of the United States does not acquire his practical science and his positive notions from books; the instruction he has acquired may have prepared him for receiving those ideas, but it did not furnish them. The American learns to know the laws by participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the forms of government from governing. The great work of society is ever going on beneath his eyes, and, as it were, under his hands.
In the United States politics are the end and aim of education; in Europe its principal object is to fit men for private life. The interference of the citizens in public affairs is too rare an occurrence for it to be anticipated beforehand. Upon casting a glance over society in the two hemispheres, these differences are indicated even by its external aspect.
In Europe we frequently introduce the ideas and the habits of private life into public affairs; and as we pass at once from the domestic circle to the government of the State, we may frequently be heard to discuss the great interests of society in the same manner in which we converse with our friends. The Americans, on the other hand, transfuse the habits of public life into their manners in private; and in their country the jury is introduced into the games of schoolboys, and parliamentary forms are observed in the order of a feast.
alexis de tocqueville. democracy in america. volume 1, chapter 17. 1830-1835.
The principles and distinctions that once set us boldly apart from the monarchies are dwindling, and have been for a long time. I fear that America doesn’t have the stomach anymore for the states disagreeing in how they govern their own affairs—nor the philosophical mind for it.
Frankly, I’m quite surprised at the recent Supreme Court decision. After a long train of abuses coming from the Court, one wonders why they would suddenly decide to overturn an unruly decision from 1973—as if we had recently reformed our unruly society, and were now wholly back in the business of following the Constitution again. Indeed, it has me wondering if there’s more going on here than meets the eye—that the overturning wasn’t done because it is the right thing to do under the rules of the Constitution, but because it will serve some immediate purpose in a greater scheme to continue whittling down the powers of the states and the people as the central government continues to steal more and more power.
And let me be clear that I’m not talking about “erosion”, but “whittling down”— the latter being quite the deliberate process. I think we are being dismantled quite on purpose. Consider De Tocqueville’s observation in his day:
In the United States politics are the end and aim of education;
alexis de tocqueville. democracy in america. volume 1, chapter 17. 1830-1835.
Ironically, I think this is still true today—not in De Tocqueville’s sense, but in a totally different manner of speaking. Since our central government got (illegally) involved in local education back in 1980, I think that the statement “politics are the end and aim of education” is now true in quite a different way. That is to say that the schools no longer attempt to prepare the students for a life of careful and wise civic involvement, but that they deliberately prepare them in such a way as to undermine a life of careful and wise civic involvement by attacking not only the principles that were foundational to the Constitution, but the very character of the students as well. We are being dismantled, and quite on purpose, by a usurping central government that has become self-aware and incorrigible.
This government—designed to be a servant of the States—has become their master. Is it not reasonable, then, to question the sudden interest in obeying a Constitution that they clearly have no interest in obeying regularly?
But I digress.
The point of this all is that, when it comes to the question of abortion, we are now—for a time— back to the original plan, under which it was up to the states to decide for themselves. It will be very interesting to see what happens. Whatever the motive behind the SCOTUS decision, perhaps it will serve to awaken a bit of the old idea that the States have rights to govern themselves as they please. And with that, perhaps some will take a notion to restore that previously-higher societal interest in philosophically-sound and responsible government.
