"States' Rights"

[xenologer]

Federalism keeps coming up from people who want a weaker federal government with stronger state governments. They are self-identified "federalists," because to them "federalism" is a code phrase for "states' rights" that (theoretically) carries less baggage from long service to segregationism.

This annoys me, and I feel a need to vent about it. I mean, it's one thing for the meaning of a word to change over time--which is inevitable and not worth fretting over--but it is quite another to totally reverse the definition of the word in the hopes of co-opting its credibility without actually having to like it.



Dear Conservatives,

About the whole "federalism" thing. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

See, according to my East Coast elitist American history classes (with their nasty tax-funded public education curriculum), the USA used to have a Federalist political party, and I'm pretty sure that what you so-called "New Federalists" want is much closer to the Federalist Party's opposition: the Democratic Republicans. Democratic Republicans were the ones who worried that "big government" was going to be a threat to the rights of the people. Federalists wanted a stronger--wait for it--federal government.

I know, I know. Complicated stuff.

But please, guys. If you're going to kneel down to fellate our forefathers in the absence of any original plans, please do it right. This so-called "New Federalism" is the brainchild of Conservatives who must have either flunked history, or hoped everyone in their constituency had.

Stop proving them right. Go read The Federalist Papers, and then decide whether you want to say, "I am a Federalist."

Hugs and kisses,

Your friendly neighborhood social scientist.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/__kat__/]

So you are telling me that if someone says to me, "I am a Federalist," I have to ask them to clarify? I honestly don't ever see myself being in that situation but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous. I think this puts me in the same situation as my grandparents ten years ago when negatives were used as positives. "Bad" vs bad, Phat vs fat, bossanova vs chevy nova... okay that last one doesn't make sense but I couldn't resist the Ninja Turtles reference. Anyway, it's too bad that politics are(is?) based on popularity rather than intelligence, we would have fewer problems if it were.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

I don't know that asking them to clarify would do any good. If they haven't given a lot of thought to the things they've integrated into the core of their identity (such as political affiliations fed to them mamabird-style by Conservative ideologues), odds are they won't be able to explain them particularly well, either.

After all, it's not like they're gonna answer, "Well, actually, I don't mean a real Federalist..."

[http://users.livejournal.com/__kat__/]

I am reminded of this xkcd comic.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

Meh. Names are mutable and arbitrary, especially in politics, especially names of *political parties*. You wouldn't try to defend the claim that the Republican Party and Democratic Party are actually defined by two clearly delineated concepts of "republicanism" vs. "democracy", would you?

Small-f "federalism" doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the capital-F Federalist Party any more than being a small-d "democrat" or small-r "republican" has anything at all to do with either major party.

Even then, if we take "federalist" to mean "like the Federalist Party", then a reading of conservatism as "federalist" isn't necessarily wrong, because words don't necessarily mean one or the other pole of an axis.

In America, we think of the word "liberal" as meaning "left-wing", plain and simple. In other countries, the word "liberal" very specifically means a kind of center-right moderation focused on hewing conservatively to a bare-bones structure of law protecting the individual. This is not really a contradiction because America is itself far more right-wing than other countries; American "liberals" aren't that different from German "liberals", it's just that in Germany "liberals" are on the center-right relative to "socialists" while in America our "liberals" are firmly on the left relative to our centrists (who would be flat-out "conservatives" anywhere else) and our conservatives (who would be flat-out "reactionary nationalists" anywhere else).

Similarly, "federalism" tends to, in political science, be a term for a middle-way between states interacting in a loose coalition (like the EU or, even more loosely, the UN) and states being forcibly unified into one nation-state (a la Germany and Italy). States being seen as autonomous and sovereign and only engaging in collective action voluntarily is described as a "confederation"; when states dissolve into one nation-state this is known as "nationalism". We don't encounter the concept much, but if someone were to start forcibly stamping out, say, signs of specifically Georgian or Alabaman culture on the grounds that it was unpatriotic to identify as anything other than simply an American, this would be "nationalism" in the sense of nationalism-vs-federalism -- something that was a big factor in German unification, for instance.

So yes, insofar as federalism represents a middle way, you can be a "federalist" and for states' rights if you think that the country is rapidly shifting toward becoming a centralized nation-state with no regional authority at all -- *and* you can be a "federalist" and be *against* states' rights if you think the states are becoming so powerful that they're going to become sovereign and destroy the central authority completely. The point of being a "federalist" is that you support the existence of two levels of power, state and national, that each have the strength to strongly compete with the other.

This is how the term "federalism" is used around the world, basically consistently -- so in Quebec a "federalist" is someone who doesn't want Quebec to declare independence, but in the EU a "federalist" is someone who does want Brussels to have the power to pass laws that count instead of non-binding resolutions. Etc.

Because, after all, the Federalist Party was the anti-states'-rights party *of the time*, but states' rights have been ridiculously reduced since then, and arguably any actual Federalist magically transported to our era would, if not stunned and confused by the electric lights and bare midriffs, find our federal government to be *vastly* more powerful and to have far more decisions to make and resources to throw around than he could've imagined back home. The Federalists, in fact, defended their policies by deriding as silly reductio ad absurdums things that we now take for granted (like the proposition that their proposed federal government might form a vast and unstoppable professional military). We are all "Federalists" if not hyper-"Federalists" by the standards of the time, just like just about every politician in the USA is a feminist by the standards of the Middle Ages, since just about no politician in the USA publicly defends honorable practices like smacking your wife when she talks back.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure the people who use the term this way now are thinking about it to that depth, though.

By the same token that they wouldn't answer the way I mentioned to __kat__, "I don't mean a real Federalist," I doubt they'd say, "Well, I mean a European-style Federalist." I'm aware that in different places "federalism" has completely different meanings, but when we're talking about people who are typically trying to be All-America, All The Way (which is why the French are unamerican despite being the source of many "American" ideals)... I can't help but feel like they're trying to borrow legitimacy from the American Federalists in a way that they wouldn't be borrowing from the Germans or Australians, even if in those cases the "foreign" federalism fits better with the approach they're pushing.

Again, if I honestly thought that most of these politicians and Conservatives were willing to call their ideals "European-style" anything, it'd annoy me less to have them use the term to mean something completely different. But I tend to hear it from folk who also believe that the Founding Fathers of our Glorious Nation had everything all figured out already back then, and that their intent is important above all things. So while they could be giving me the more informed explanation you just did... I can't help but feel like this is just another case of Conservatives invoking "founders' intent" without feeling a need to know (or care) what that actually means.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

I agree that people who talk about the "vision of the Founding Fathers" have a heavily mythologized, basically false idea of what the Founding Fathers were about -- they were bickering politicians with no more of a grand unified vision of what the country should become than Congress has today.

At the same time, though, I disagree with you that "wanting the country to be more like the Founders intended" is an incoherent or meaningless ideal. It is true that there are many ways in which our country is totally different from things *all* of the Founders held as basic baseline assumptions of how things worked and that there is a set of proposals you could make that would, indeed, have the very clear effect of making our country look more like it did in the 1700s. Increasing states' rights would be one of them.

(Note that I of course don't agree with any such proposals, because I think our country changing from the "Founders' vision" is a necessary and proper result of our country being bigger, richer, more complex and more technologically advanced than any country was back then. But that's not to say that what they're talking about is logically incoherent or historically mistaken.)

when an apple is an orange

[cernowain.livejournal.com]

I would agree with Arctangent, except for the fact that the conservatives in America have made it a practice in that last ten years or so to re-define words in order to co-opt or escew the meaning.

They have taken the word "tolerance" and made it mean "you have to believe as they believe".

The word "diversity", for these folks, has been redefined to mean "everyone has to think the same thing".

"Feminism", for some, now means "Feminazi" or "Man-hater", even though the dictionary says it simply means believing in equal pay for equal work despite one's gender.

Even though these words have standard dictionary definitions, they have been redefined so that when a liberal speaks them, the conservative hearer hears something totally different than what is meant.

It is getting very old. But I guess they will keep on doing this as long as people keep dropping out of high school and never get to grade 11 English vocabulary.

bb,

Cern

Re: when an apple is an orange

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

Disliking the partisan renaming of words doesn't mean one has to participate in it. "Federalism" as a general word has a specific meaning and people who say that increasing, for instance, the DHS's oversight over individual sheriff's departments is an "erosion of federalism" are saying something completely true and defensible.

Federalism means a sharing of powers between local and central authorities, each of which has a specific set of inalienable powers the other can't touch. This is a perfectly cromulent word, and one should be free to use the word and to be able to make statements like "I'm in favor of more federalism in the area of counterterrorism" or "I'm in favor of decreasing federalism in favor of strong national leadership in this area" without anyone jumping on "federalism" because "it's a conservative word".

I will strongly state, for instance, that despite my belief that federalism is overall not a bad thing I think that a decrease in federalism and an increase in central leadership -- what in Europe they would call "weak federalism" -- would be beneficial for the school system. It would be annoying if conservatives attacked me as being "against federalism" because of this and used it as a buzzword, but I wouldn't sweat it because they would, after all, be right.

Same with the word "feminism". Most conservatives who use "feminist" as a slur, hate "feminists" and hate "feminism" are annoying, but they're not using the word *incorrectly*. They really are against feminism, against feminists, and so on. Trying to carp about their use of the word is a waste of time, as is trying to yell at people and tell them "Yes, you *are* really a feminist!" when they say they're not.

[crysthewolf.livejournal.com]

I HAVE SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO ADD....

I'm stealing your icon.