Historian Heather Cox Richardson writes on her blog that Republicans want to remove federal protections on many issues and restore states’ control. Several Republican senators have spoken out against Supreme Court decisions that overturned state laws on abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, even interracial marriage. It was Senator Mike Braun of Indiana who said that the states should decide whether people of different races should be allowed to marry, but when the negative reactions poured in, he claimed he misunderstood the question. He was unusually clear for someone who “misunderstood the question.”
It’s sad that any Republican would question the right of people of different races to marry at the very moment that the Senate is questioning a Black woman judge who is married to a white man.
The Republicans who seek to revive a system of states’ rights and long-discredited laws reveal that they long to return to the 1950s, when segregation was legal in some states, women were not allowed to buy contraceptive devices or have an abortion, and gays were in the closet.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And the “little woman” was most likely home being a full-time housewife raising her brood of children waiting for “hubby” to get home so she could use the car to run her errands. Many of us were children in the fifties – it’s not a time I would like to live through again.
Mike Braun:
“Here I come to save the day!”
That means that Mighty MOUTH
is on the way!
Yes sir, when there is a wrong
to right
Mighty MOUTH will join the
fight
On the sea or on the land
He gets the situation well in
hand
So though we are in danger
We never despair
‘Cause we know that where
there’s danger
He is there!
He is there! On the land!
On the sea! In the air!
We’re not worryin’ at all
We’re just listenin’
for his call:
“Here I come to save the day!”
That means that Mighty MOUTH
is on the way!
That means a “seat at the table”,
the price of admission, is based
on “knowing” WHAT to say,
not WHAT to do.
Go figure, it smacks of the
“know-that”=”know-how”
paradigm…
This article is spot on for what the right is trying to accomplish. They are pushing for more states’ rights. All of their efforts to hinder any type of federal authority point in that direction. DeSantis is a study in this effort. He has recently referred to Florida as the “free” state of Florida, and he has done everything he can to countermand the federal Covid mandates. He has even punished school districts that did not comply with his no mask mandate in direct opposition to what the CDC and federal government proposed. If the right continues to chisel away at hard fought civil and gender rights, we will be operating in reverse. The radical right wants to return to the time when white men ruled, and everyone else didn’t matter. The Republicans under Trump also made lots of conservative appointments to federal judge positions. They also control the Supreme Court that just ruled that the gerrymandered voting districts can stand in Wisconsin. This does not bode well for future decisions.
They are doing the exact same thing that was done with the ESSA, diluting opposition and seizing legal ground by Balkanizing the various ideological / culture war fights they have started into 50 separate ones at the state level rather than allowing federal/SCOTUS legal decisions to be universally applied to the nation as a whole. “States Rights” is code for divide and conquer.
“Culture War” is Pat Buchanan’s framing so that the two major conservative religions can hide their identity while taking away our rights. “Culture war” implies legitimacy and widespread support.
The truth is we are witnessing attacks on separation of church and state by a minority of religious control freaks who have hate in their hearts for women, blacks and gay people.
With Charles Koch’s continued business operations in Russia, we understand that “religious liberty’ is spin for no liberty, the type that Ukrainians are experiencing.
Agreed .
Thanks, Joel.
When has state rights been anything but a way to deny human rights? Much of the pushback against abolitionism in the early national period and into the Jacksonian period was framed in terms of states rights. Jim Crow laws were the right of the state. The fight against integration was framed as a matter of states rights.
In Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean convinced me that the modern Republican Party has a plan to rule the country by using the idea of states rights to rule the country with a minority of the people in support.
It is time, among other things, to pass a privacy Amendment to the Constitution. Individuals need protection from those who claim they support a small government, but want to intrude with that government to look in your window.
I never understood the right wing fascination with “small government.” If we are supposed to be “we the people,” then the government should work to protect them regardless of size. Now that we have a ridiculous ideal that corporations are people, we have seen so many decisions that favor big money while the little people remain as the victims of big money’s efforts to commodify everything including public institutions and services, especially the endless war on public education.
RT: I believe corporations are actually competing governments within governments. I support this with the British East India Company, which ran India until the Sepoy rebellion in 1857. Similar relationships wherein the corporation acted as government abound in history. Often the government of the corporation is a competing vision rather than a cooperative vision within a country, as it was during the age of imperialism.
If they want to relegate all of those things to “the states,” they are going to need to repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Or negate it, as they did in 1896 with Plessy
The looney tunes craziness of the GOP far right nudniks was on full display with their merciless and bizarre grilling of Ketanji Brown Jackson. The Q-Anon crowd cheered and approved of the GOP’s performance.
I think those Republicans want to go back further than the 1950s. I suspect they want to return to a time when women and children were the property of men and there were still slave states.
Maybe someone pointed out to Braun letting the states decide on interracial marriage would annul Justice Clarence Thomas’ marriage to Ginni? She reportedly had the ear of Trump and helped with some of his staff selections.
After Loving v Virginia did the state ever drop the law off the books? Maybe the Thomas’ live in DC or Maryland.
sneezypb
You provide an interesting example.
Republicans are very comfortable with hypocrisy. I’m certain that Ginni can spin an exception for her and Clarence.
LOL, sneezypb!
Wikipedia identifies Mike Braun as Roman Catholic. (63% of white Catholics who attend church regularly voted for Trump in 2020,)
I appreciate Heather Cox Richardson’s willingness to state the obvious- the role that conservative religion plays in all of the attempts (and, successes) in taking away rights. To expand on HCR’s point about the GOP and Catholic support, the Ryan Girdusky interview posted at Pat Buchanan’s site, provides disturbing insight.
Girdusky formed the 1776 PAC that funds school board candidates who oppose CRT.
In Indiana, Catholics publicly take credit for the initiation and passage of school choice legislation.
Following is a letter I am writing to SCOTUS. I want to work on it further but it may have some interest.
aurence Tribe’s critique of Stephen Breyer’s “The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politcs” plus “Justice on the Brink” in the March 10 issue of the New York Book Review expresses many of the huge concerns so very many of us have concerning SOCTUS, its credibility and the future of democratic governance in our country.
1/3 of the courts has been appointed by a president who:
• lost the popular vote by 3 million, then 6 million votes, hardly democracy at its best.
• Tried to destroy the workings of the Constitution for his personal benefit through lies et al.
• Was viewed by the rest of the democratic governments around the world as a danger to all. Etc.
AND 2 of those 3 justices were appointed only by political shenanigans and if concerned by a love of country over personal ambition would have resigned and restored some credibility to the Court.
Even worse are some of the rulings of SCOTUS which in Tribe’s opinion and mine, jeopardize democratic governing in our country.
• Minimizing the ability of people to vote,
• Eroded wall separating church and state.
• Corporations have the same rights as people. As of present they have more influence on governing than an informed populace.
• Matters like abortion, voting rights, criminal justice, business interests reflect political ideologies couched as methodological differences.
I totally agree: “ We have more to lose than to gain by continuing to praise the court even when we see the trajectory of its decisions as destructive of what we hold most dear about our constitutional order” .
A subsequent article, April 7 “Should we Reform the Court” by Linda Greenhouse enumerates the many problems pertaining to the court, congruent with the above by respected law scholars. Many of us are not alone in our fears for democratic governance.
This article deals with the problems inherent in any change in the court.
My own personal observation, Just as in the basic systems of government; autocracy, oligarchy, democratic, it is not just the system, maybe not even primarily the system, but the people who are ruling within that system as to the workings of that society. I do nut propose this but just to illustrate the point, in Turkey an absolute dictator, Ataturk, brought Turkey into the 20th century.
History shows that sometimes SCOTUS members have enlarged their perspective during their tenure so perhaps, as long as at least the three justices appointed by a would be dictator will not resign to allow for someone who won by 6 million votes to balance and perhaps give a bit more credibility to the court I would at least beseech them to look within themselves and put the needs of our country ahead of perhaps their limited philosophy.
No matter one’s basic philosophy one needs to evaluate what is actually happening to decide one’s actions, pragmatism if you will. To try to decide, limit one’s opinions, to what one believes is the framers intent of our Constitution meant is to limit the perspective of the needs of the present. Limiting thus one’s perspective to opinion vs broadening to include the complete picture is to limit the value of one’s actions.
One party has been captured by fear of a person who would destroy our Constitution. If SCOTUS as pointed out above continues to eviscerate the people’s welfare by constraining their thought processes leading to their findings many of us fear for the worth of the ‘Constitution itself.
me interest.