Texans are leading a movement to recast the perception of states’ rights as Antebellum code for racial oppression. Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Mario Loyola at the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies in Austin, Burleson’s own Kelly Clarkson.
Kelly Clarkson?
After tweeting to her gazillion fans, "I love Ron Paul," and following up with a radio interview saying, "He believes in states having their rights, and I think that that's very important,” Clarkson was inundated by people letting her know she made a big mistake, according to a national Associated Press story today.
"My eyes have been opened to so much hate," she wrote in contrition. "I do not support racism."
Clarkson, however, has helped open eyes to a generation of political thinking based not on racial politics but on the overreach of the federal government, the story says.
John Shelton Reed, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says the slavery connotation is lost on someone like the 29-year-old Clarkson.
"It's clear that we've turned some kind of page," he says.
Paul and Perry during his campaign for president have made vigorous reference to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The Texas Public Policy Foundation has thought it so important to its conservative message that it established the Tenth Amendment Center with Loyola as director.
Working with Ted Cruz, the former Texas Solicitor General and a candidate for U.S. Senate, Loyola laid out the Constitutional foundation for taking health care authority away from the federal government in the form of health care compacts.
In July, Texas became just the fourth state to approve a plan that would allow the state to enter into agreements with other states to run a health care system without federal direction.
Last April, Perry told an audience at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas the authentic meaning of states’ rights has been eroded. "Over the years and decades,” he said, “Washington has extended its reach bit by bit, until the sound concepts behind the 10th Amendment were blurred and lost and the idea of states' rights has become increasingly disregarded."
Which doesn’t mean the phrase no longer recalls for some the states’ rights segregation platform of Sen. Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats in 1948 and Jim Crow laws in the South.
David Azerrad thinks conservatives would be better off staying away from the term altogether.
"In case you didn't know,” the assistant director of The Heritage Foundation's B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, wrote in a blog post, “'states' rights' was the rallying cry of segregationists. Since no right-thinking conservative will keep company with such people, let's just drop the term states' rights once and for all."
Prof. Reed, however, thinks the emergence of a new, albeit original meaning of states’ rights might not be a bad thing.
"I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while — like, 150 years or so," he told Associated Press. "I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me."
After tweeting to her gazillion fans, "I love Ron Paul," and following up with a radio interview saying, "He believes in states having their rights, and I think that that's very important,” Clarkson was inundated by people letting her know she made a big mistake, according to a national Associated Press story today.
"My eyes have been opened to so much hate," she wrote in contrition. "I do not support racism."
Clarkson, however, has helped open eyes to a generation of political thinking based not on racial politics but on the overreach of the federal government, the story says.
John Shelton Reed, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says the slavery connotation is lost on someone like the 29-year-old Clarkson.
"It's clear that we've turned some kind of page," he says.
Paul and Perry during his campaign for president have made vigorous reference to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The Texas Public Policy Foundation has thought it so important to its conservative message that it established the Tenth Amendment Center with Loyola as director.
Working with Ted Cruz, the former Texas Solicitor General and a candidate for U.S. Senate, Loyola laid out the Constitutional foundation for taking health care authority away from the federal government in the form of health care compacts.
In July, Texas became just the fourth state to approve a plan that would allow the state to enter into agreements with other states to run a health care system without federal direction.
Last April, Perry told an audience at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas the authentic meaning of states’ rights has been eroded. "Over the years and decades,” he said, “Washington has extended its reach bit by bit, until the sound concepts behind the 10th Amendment were blurred and lost and the idea of states' rights has become increasingly disregarded."
Which doesn’t mean the phrase no longer recalls for some the states’ rights segregation platform of Sen. Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats in 1948 and Jim Crow laws in the South.
David Azerrad thinks conservatives would be better off staying away from the term altogether.
"In case you didn't know,” the assistant director of The Heritage Foundation's B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, wrote in a blog post, “'states' rights' was the rallying cry of segregationists. Since no right-thinking conservative will keep company with such people, let's just drop the term states' rights once and for all."
Prof. Reed, however, thinks the emergence of a new, albeit original meaning of states’ rights might not be a bad thing.
"I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while — like, 150 years or so," he told Associated Press. "I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me."
***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.
Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.
Follow Texas Health Care Report on Twitter, and fan us on Facebook. Texas Health Care Report is a project of Texas Watchdog.
Photo of Kelly Clarkson by flickr user SportsAngle.com, used via a Creative Commons license.
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.
Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.
Follow Texas Health Care Report on Twitter, and fan us on Facebook. Texas Health Care Report is a project of Texas Watchdog.
Photo of Kelly Clarkson by flickr user SportsAngle.com, used via a Creative Commons license.
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