Why Do Conservatives Support States’ Rights?

Politics is a funny thing. The position of any particular political party may vary depending on where we are at as a nation in any particular time period. Political reality, however, does not. It was not always the case that conservatives belonged to the Republican party and liberals belonged to the Democratic party. In fact, the Democratic Party had become the conservative party by the 1840’s, and didn’t transition fully to the liberal party until after the Civil Rights movement. In the 1860’s the Republican party was the liberal and progressive party.

This well understood history has seemed to baffle conservatives as of late, as they frequently try to take credit for liberal progress when the vast majority of the society has seen the benefits of that progress. Nothing could be more clear about this than with the issue of slavery that plagued our nation since its birth.

While conservatives revere themselves in that Lincoln was the first Republican President of the United States, they miss that Lincoln, as was the rest of the Republican party at that time, were all radical liberals. While the knuckle-draggers will certainly have doubt about this, I simply offer this: excerpts from the Republican Party Platform of 1872.

The Republican party of the United States, assembled in National Convention in the city of Philadelphia, on the 5th and 6th days of June, 1872, again declares its faith, appeals to its history, and announces its position upon the questions before the country…

During eleven years of supremacy it has accepted with grand courage the solemn duties of the time. It suppressed a gigantic rebellion, emancipated four millions of slaves, decreed the equal citizenship of all, and established universal suffrage. Exhibiting unparalleled magnanimity, it criminally punished no man for political offenses, and warmly welcomed all who proved loyalty by obeying the laws and dealing justly with their neighbors. It has steadily decreased with firm hand the resultant disorders of a great war, and initiated a wise and humane policy toward the Indians…

Note the use of words such as “equal citizenship of all” and “universal suffrage”. The Republican party that once stood for a wise and humane policy towards the Indians. What is the Republican position towards Mexican Indians in this country today? This gets better.

Menacing foreign difficulties have been peacefully and honorably composed, and the honor and power of the nation kept in high respect throughout the world. This glorious record of the past is the party's best pledge for the future. We believe the people will not intrust the Government to any party or combination of men composed chiefly of those who have resisted every step of this beneficent progress…

Imagine a Republican party that once utilized peacefully and honorably composed diplomacy to deal with foreign difficulties? Those days are long gone. It gets even better.

We are opposed to further grants of the public lands to corporations and monopolies, and demand that the national domain be set apart for free homes for the people…

Holy shit! Imagine that, a Republican party that once wanted to eliminate giving public land to corporations and instead eliminate the problem of homelessness by giving everyone in the country a free home that needed one! Not even Howard Dean has the balls to suggest that one.

The annual revenue, after paying current expenditures, pensions, and the interest on the public debt…should be raised by duties upon importations, the details of which should be so adjusted as to aid in securing remunerative wages to labor…

No free trade fundamentalism in this Republican party of old. They believed that trade tariffs should be specifically calibrated in order to increase the wages of working Americans…

[T]he Republican party recognizes the duty of so shaping legislation as to secure full protection…for labor—the creator of capital…

The Republican party being run by a pack full of raging Marxists? Who would have thunk it?

The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom. Their admission to wider fields of usefulness is viewed with satisfaction, and the honest demand of any class of citizens for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration.

Just imagine. The Republican party: the country’s first feminists.

And that was the Republican party in the era of the post Civil War days: Raving Marxists, feminists, and abolishionists. In short, radical liberals and progressives. And that is where the Republican party remained for the most part all the way up to the 20th century when things began to shift. It wasn’t until Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in to save the nation from the Great Depression that the Democratic party took a major shift back to its origins as the liberal party. When FDR’s successor, Democratic president Harry Truman desegregated the US military and endorsed Civil Rights legislation, southern Democrats, or Dixiecrats, were outraged enough to form a third party; The States’ Rights Democratic Party.

The importance of the States having a great deal of power came a great deal out of the ideals of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who sought to establish a nation that placed a great deal of local power in the hands of the local people, the idea being that local politicians would represent a smaller number of people, and would therefore be more democratic. This idea came largely out of the government structure of the Iroquis Confederacy, a democratically-controlled Indian government based out of the Ohio River Valley region. The Iroquis combined several tribes together under one government for mutual benefit, but made the individual Indian nations under the confederacy sovereign and powerful.

However, making our nation more democratic wasn’t what the States’ Rights Democratic Party had in mind. Rather, they existed for one primary purpose, as their slogan proudly proclaimed, “Segregation Forever!”. But what other ideas did the Dixiecrats have? Here are excerpts from the States’ Rights Democratic Party platform of 1948:

We stand for social and economic justice, which, we believe can be guaranteed to all citizens only by a strict adherence to our Constitution…

We oppose…centralized bureaucratic government…

We stand for…the constitutional right…to accept private employment without governmental interference…

We oppose…the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats…

We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights…

We oppose…regulations of private employment practices…

What party sounds like THAT today? Ultimately, there was only one reason why the States’ Rights Democratic Party supported states rights without interference from the federal government. That was for the sole reason to have the ability to continue the plague of racial discrimination in the southern states.

And to Trent Lott’s dismay, Harry Truman won his re-election for President of the United States in 1948, and the modern Civil Rights movement began just 6 years later with the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education.

And whatever happened to the prominent Democrats who broke off into the failed States’ Rights Democratic Party? Like Reagan, both Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm switched their party membership from Democratic to Republican.

So to address the question that began with, why do conservatives support states’ rights? The States’ Rights Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, Strom Thurmond, could have easily have told you this, even while he was engaging in one of his favorite hobbies of raping black women; and that is simply this:

“Segregation Forever!”