humanities.philosophy.objectivism

"Charles Bell" wrote in message
news:cecac27c-11f4-4053-88fe-1ef692e76713@k13g2000hse.googlegroups.com...

>> 2) He really believed that sovereign states literally have rights, and
>> that
>> US states were qualified as sovereign in his decentralized vision or
>> government - where they were co-equal to the federal governments and
>> equally
>> empowered to resolve disputes between the two.
>>
>
>
> No. Bad interpretation. No "co-equal" about it. Separate and
> sovereign but held in union by the powers and responsibilities of the
> federal government for a "more perfect union" to benefit the states
> and thereby the citizens of the states.
>

Last week I found where Jefferson wrote in the Kentucky resolution that when
a state disagreed with the federal government regarding its constitutional
authority, "as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common
judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of
infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." I think that pretty
much blows away the Supremacy Clause, and I don't know what other power
states would need besides the power to unilaterally judge and redress
differenced in order to be considered co-equal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_and_Virginia_Resolutions
This wikipedia entry states that when South Carolina declared high tariffs
unconstitutional (I think paralleling Jefferson's reasoning), other states'
rights proponents rebelled, including Andrew Jackson proclaiming

""I consider...the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one
State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly
by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent
with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great
object for which it was formed." He also denied the right of secession: "The
Constitution...forms a government not a league...To say that any State may
at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a
nation.""

I'm no authority on this, but from what I read it appears that Jefferson's
interpretation of states' rights was very outside the norm.

Bill Carson