No; in *real life *“states rights” refers to “the right wing has the right to do as it pleases and force everyone else to go along, everyone else doesn’t”. Everything else is handwaving.
The Fugitive Slave Act was exactly that; the slave states demanding that other states not only tolerate slavery, but enforce slavery for them as well as force free black people into slavery.
And when they lost the power to do that kind of thing? Why, other states doing things their way was so intolerable the South started a civil war over it. And created a Confederacy that forbade states to reject slavery; so much for their love of “states rights”.
Except as Bricker and I both pointed out, that version of history is wrong. The first Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1793 and allowed slaveowners to seize their slaves in free states in accordance with the US Constitution. The fugitive slave law you are discussing was a counter to personal liberty laws (basically laws allowing people to ignore the Constitution) and so it required people to follow the law.
As distasteful as it may seem, anyone who believes that the Fugitive Slave Laws should not have been obeyed despite the Constitution and Federal Law are themselves guilty of the same argument the South used in defense of States’ Rights.
I’m depressed and hopeless, both personally and for the nation. Pretty much everything I value is going to be destroyed, or worse. Of course I’m not much fun right now.
We’re putting white nationalists led by an egomaniac into power, and you think that things worse than mere destruction is “dialing it up to 11”? That’s naive.
You have to randomly insert “Benghazi”, “emails”, “Whitewater”, and “Vince Foster” into the sentence. Think of MadLibs (except that you can’t use Lib, so let’s call them MadCons - bonus points for “Islamic Terrorism”(r), “illegal immigrants”, and “activist judge”).
He was pretending Clinton and not Trump was the egomaniac to whom you were referring. It’s a variation on “I know you are but what am I?” This is humour, conservative-style.
It is kinda telling that the Trumpies have resorted to the exact tactic the Soviets used in the cold war - accusing your enemy of doing exactly what you’re doing.
Surely if President Trump does someone the high honor of appointing him Attorney General the least he could do is to make any investigations of the President go away!!!
