In my latest reading of Rick Perry's Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington,
Perry defends states' rights against the charge that such a concept was
used to uphold slavery and segregation, and he also makes other
historical arguments.
Regarding slavery, Perry astutely notes that
there were pro-slavery measures that assaulted states' rights, such as
the Fugitive Slave Law, which required Northern states to return slaves
to their Southern masters. On segregation, Perry states on page 34 that
the end of segregation resulted from the implementation of
constitutional amendments to protect individual rights, but that
federalism was also respected. Perry is rather nebulous about what he
means here. Perhaps he is saying that the U.S. Constitution
(specifically the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments)
granted the federal government the authority to uphold the rights of
African-Americans, and so its attempts to do so were not an
unconstitutional federal usurpation of states' rights or jurisdiction,
in contrast to many federal programs, which violate the Tenth
Amendment's reservation of many powers to the states. Perry's
statement that the federal government respected federalism in its
pursuit of civil rights reminded me of Dean Kotlowski's argument in Nixon's Civil Rights that President Richard Nixon often sought to work with rather than against
the South in effecting desegregation (though there were also times when
Nixon employed a more heavy-handed approach, as Kotlowski
acknowledges).
Whenever I discuss the ills of
capitalism with libertarians, they like to point out to me that the
Robber Barons were supported by government funding, and so I cannot
appeal to them as an example of why laissez-faire does not work. Perry,
however, has a much more positive view on the Robber Barons than do my
libertarian friends. Perry acknowledges that the government helped the
Robber Barons out a little, but he praises their productivity, their
creation of jobs and infrastructure, and the massive charitable giving
by Carnegie and Rockefeller (which, in today's dollars, would amount to
hundreds of billions of dollars).
But what about the Robber
Barons' poor treatment of their workers? Was not the government right
to impose regulations to correct that? Perry says on page 43 that
Congress did not possess the constitutional authority to "make laws
regarding manufacturing, unions, or minimum wages, because those
activities occurred within the boundaries of states and were not part of
the interstate commerce that the Constitution authorized Congress to
regulate." At the same time, on page 45, Perry criticizes the
U.S. Supreme Court for the times that it struck down state laws
regarding the minimum wage and "limits on hours worked". Perry's
implication may be that the states can come up with progressive policies
on their own.
I grant that there are times when
federal violation of states' rights contradicts what is
progressive----as when the Fugitive Slave Law told Northern states what
to do, and when the Supreme Court struck down state laws that helped
workers. At the same time, I would be very reluctant to say
that this means states' rights should be an absolute, for I believe that
the federal government was correct to outlaw slavery and to counter
segregation. Moreover, I agree with Noam Chomsky's argument
that state governments may be less likely to implement progressive
policies that (say) protect the environment and workers, for these state
governments want to keep businesses in their own states, and thus
they'd be more likely to give big businesses what they want, even if it
hurts people. The federal government, however, does not have that
problem to the same extent (though, on the other hand, businesses can
leave America and go overseas).