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Why the states can’t handle the coronavirus response alone
The Federal government must play a role
Trump loves to argue that in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the states should be left alone to do their own thing.
States’ rights, of course, is a clarion call for conservatives. As with so many things, the reason for this association has to do with race. The southern justification for fighting the Civil War was that they were protecting the states’ rights against an overly aggressive federal government. The next question, however, becomes states’ rights to do what? The answer, of course, is to own slaves.
We saw this disingenuous argument rear its ugly head again after the Civil War, when certain federal officials sought to protect the rights of newly freed slaves. Starting in 1900, for example, an anti-lynching bill was introduced into Congress every year. It didn’t finally pass until this year — 120 years later. The official justification for opposing such an obviously moral bill? States rights.
The reality, of course, is that the totalitarian southern regimes — with Democrats in charge for those of you who think I’m overly partisan — wanted to stop uppity Black people and their allies from standing up to the white terrorism that kept these regimes in power.
