States’ Right and Society

States’ Right and Society

Thomas Allen

Discussed below are States’ right and society. In this article, “state” is used in two different senses. In the first two sections on States’ rights, “state” refers to a territory and its body politic. In the section on society, “state” refers to an abstract, suprapersonal entity that is above all and is in all and exercises the supreme power.

States’ Rights
States’ rights mean that each State retains all political sovereignty individually and independently of all other States. Consequently, under the United States Constitution, each State retains for itself all political powers except the few powers delegated to their agent, the general government (also called the federal government and the US government) by the Constitution and the powers that they denied themselves by the Constitution. Moreover, the Constitution is merely a compact or treaty among equal sovereigns.

In Lane County vs. Oregon, the US Supreme Court declared in 1868:

The people of each State compose a State, having its own government, and endowed with all the functions essential to separate and independent existence. The States disunited might continue to exist. Without the States in union, there could be no such political body as the United States.

Unfortunately, Lincoln and his war and the resulting fourteenth amendment destroyed the original constitution and subverted States into mere administrative provinces.

The Tenth Amendment
The tenth amendment is the States’ rights amendment. It affirms that each State and the people thereof have all sovereign powers not explicitly and particularly delegated to the US government by the Constitution or that it does not specifically deny the States. It reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

In “Conservatism and the South,” The Lasting South (1957, page 200), James Kilpatrick explains the tenth amendment as follows:

This amendment consists of a single sentence, only twenty-eight words long; it is in no way obscure. The powers (not rights, as in the Ninth Amendment, but powers) not delegated to the United States (the verb is delegated, not "surrendered," or "granted," or "vested in," but merely delegated) by the Constitution (not by inference, or by any notions of inherent powers, but by the Constitution alone), nor prohibited by it to the States (prohibited by the Constitution, that is, by its specific limitations, and not by mandate of any court or Congress or executive, but only by the Constitution itself), are reserved to the States respectively (not to the States jointly, but to the States individually and respectively), or to the people (because there may be some powers the people will not wish to entrust even to their States).

Chodorov on States’ Rights
In One Is Crowd: Reflections of an Individualist (New York: The Devin-Adair Company,  1952, page 158), Frank Chodorov gives a good description of States’ rights. About States’ rights he writes:

[States' rights] proceed from a philosophical axiom, that the individual is the only reality. He alone exists. Without him there cannot be a society, and without society there is no need of government. Society, in fact, is nothing but a convenient abstraction, a word describing an agglomeration of individuals cooperating for their mutual advantage. The character of society is but a composite of the characters of its components; it has no other. In short, society is nothing of itself.

A “society” is a convenient abstraction that describes “an aggregate of individual cooperating for their mutual advantage” (p. 158).

Society
In Rise and Fall of Society (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1959, page 29), Frank Chodorov gives this definition of society: “Society is a collective concept and nothing else; it is a convenience for designating a number of people. . . . Society is different from these other collective nouns [family, crowd, gang, etc.] in that it conveys the idea of a purpose or point of contact in which each individual, while retaining his identity and pursuing his private concerns, has an interest. . . . Society . . .  embraces a host of people following all sorts of vocations and avocations, pursuing a variety of goals, each in his own way, and yet held together by a purpose which is in each of them.”

Thus, individuals come together to form a society to advance their mutual interest and to further their purposes and aspirations. To protect the lives, property, and liberties of the people forming a society, the people instituted a government. Unfortunately, governments degenerate into states, which proceeds to deprive the people of their property and liberty and at times their lives. (See “The Difference Between Government and State” by Thomas Allen.)

In other words, a state cannot exist without a government. A government cannot exist without a society, and a society cannot exist without individuals. None of these abstractions — society, government, and state — have a life independent of the individuals comprising them. None are greater than the sum of its parts. They are merely metaphysical persons with no life of their own. They are not suprapersonal.

God created man, and man established societies, governments, and states. None of these institutions can exist independently of man — just as man cannot exist independently of God. Philosophers, political scientists, economists, and others who treat society, government, and state as entities that are independent of or superior to the individuals comprising them deceive themselves. Moreover, they err when they give society, government, and state characteristics of an individual. Giving them such attributes led to the horrors of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Mao’s China.

In closing, an additional explanation of state and society is needed. The concept of the relationship between society and state has changed over time. In times past, the state was an entity that was completely outside society and existed independent of it. People had to reckon with this entity called a state and either feared it or admired it. They saw the state as advancing their agenda or taking their property and liberty. However, they never thought of the state as an integral part of society: It was apart from and above society.

Now, people conceive the State and society such that they are indistinguishable, either conceptually or institutionally. That is, the state is society and the social order has become an appendage of the state. Thus, society, i.e., the people, is dependent on the state as represented by the government for its health, education, communications, transportation, charity, and just about everything else. The people look to the state, the government, to solve their problems; consequently, the people are no longer self-reliant and have enslaved themselves to those who control the state. As a result, the state has become the society. Additionally, since people look to the state to save and deliver them instead of God and themselves, they have made an idol out of the state — therefore, they are idolaters.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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