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Comment by cuteboy19 | Hacker News Reader

i can understand not wanting power to be centralized in the hands of a faraway federal govt. but i dont understand the fetish of states rights. why not city rights or county rights. or heaven forbid maybe even individual rights

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It's a balancing act between individual rights and ability of the society to govern itself without disintegrating (at which point nobody would have any rights).

But, yes, states are just as artificial as US as a whole. Municipalities feel like they're the lowest level organization that is actually somewhat organic and interconnected.

Individual rights are far more likely to be recognized at a Federal level than at the State level. The whole "states rights" non-sense is about the ability to restrict what or how other folks live.

Do you have any basis for this assertion? I find that my state constitution is far better than the federal one in most regards.

And yet those rights cease to exist when you cross state lines.

And yes, the Civil Rights Act, the 14th Amendment, formally Roe vs Wade, Brown v. BoE, etc.

I will go a step further and say that ONLY the Federal government can secure your individual rights. If your rights can be erased by crossing a state line, then you don't have an individual right.

Your federal rights also "cease to exist" the moment you cross the national border. By the same logic, we should be striving for One World Government, and anything less than that is unacceptable.

As for the federal government securing my individual rights in general - considering the existing federal drug laws, and the very real possibility of a federal abortion ban coming in a few years, I'd say you're cherry-picking here.

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