Opinion of the phrase "States Rights"

[So rightwing that I broke the Political Compass!]

Neutral. Remember that while states rights enabled states to retain slavery, they also allowed states to abolish slavery. Similarly states rights allowed abortion legality to gain a foothold, and has allowed gay marriage to gain a foothold.

As a matter of principle I prefer state action to federal action, simply because the US is so bloody diverse... it doesn't make much sense for Massachusetts, Hawaii, Utah and Georgia to be subject to the same socioeconomic policies...

I know a lot of leftwingers favour federal action as a means of keeping conservatism in check in red states... they should remember the same federal action curtails liberalism in blue states. If you have genuine confidence in your ideology you should feel comfortable delegating more authority to the states and letting the results speak for themselves.

Especially since red states are net winners in terms of federal revenue while blue states are net losers... more delegation of fiscal matters to states would be to the advantage of left leaning states financially.

It also happens to be more fundamentally democratic to have policy issues decided by 50 different units separately then it is for policy issues to be decided by one super unit combining those 50 units.