Thursday, October 20, 2005

States' Rights and Skunks

In light of the preceding post, I want to make it perfectly clear that I favor States' rights -- as long as States' rights advance liberty. The Left (Stevens-Souter-Ginsburg-Breyer) wing of the Supreme Court has no such agenda. The Court's Left wing has as its main agenda the advancement of governmental power. Anyone who applauds the Left wing's accidental embrace of States' rights (as in Kelo) might as well applaud the Dixiecrat wing of the Democrat Party for its cynical embrace of States' rights in the defense of state-enforced segregation and denial of voting rights.

When it comes to the advancement of liberty, it is only fitting and proper to deploy every legal argument at one's disposal -- as I have tried to do in the preceding post. The old saying goes that you can't win a peeing contest with a skunk (i.e., the Left wing of the Supreme Court). My version goes like this: Sometimes you can't avoid a peeing contest with a skunk; that's when you stand back a safe distance and blast it with a fire hose.

When it comes to the defense of liberty, a timid bow to States' rights is no virtue and an attack on States' rights isn't always a vice.