Opinion of the phrase "States Rights"

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

While I agree with what it sometimes means, it's too associated with awful things in the past and it's easily misunderstood.  It's true as some critics have said "states don't have rights, people do."  At the same time, states play an important role in balancing the impulses of the national government to take power and infringe on those rights.  Federalism or subsidiarity are better terms.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Absolutely vile, horrible phrase. Reactionary to the extreme, in pretty much every context it's ever been used.

States'-rights opposition to the Sedition Act and the Fugitive Slave Act are examples to the contrary.

Although this really hasn't been the case since the Civil War, since you're making this argument are you familiar with Henry Adams's excellent (and entirely accurate) quote on the subject?

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along with this, the Confederate Constitution explicitly guaranteed slavery in every state, but did nothing to allow for secession or even nullification.