states' rights

One of the most salient observations in American political circles is the truism that state sovereignty has eroded significantly in the two and a half centuries since the founding of the nation, generally leaving the states autonomous in name only. The killing blow to practicable "states' rights" is usually considered the Civil War. It also didn't help that states' rights were often used to defend numerous racist policies afterward.

However, the idea that we have too much power centralized in a distant and abstract federal government still isn't dead and is worth examining.

The boundaries of the states themselves were political creations; either reflecting the settlement patterns of British colonists or purely arbitrary lines on the map. In many ways, the states fail to take into account the cultural, social, and ecological reality of present-day America.

The State of New Jersey, for example, is one of the country’s smaller states but consists of several vastly different regions. The northeastern portion of the state is dominated by the huge conurbanized sprawl surrounding the city of New York while the northwestern area is largely rural and suburban with high-income residents predominating in some areas. South Jersey is defined by the Pine Barrens ecoregion and the Jersey Shore is a coastal tourist area with a boardwalk economy of casinos, arcades, hotels, and restaurants. To vest New Jersey with authority is to ignore the fact that the state suffers from the same drawbacks as the federal government. In what few areas the culturally and geographically distant federal government leaves to the states, policies must somehow take into account all these different regions.

These difficulties don't change the fact that the nation needs a system which recognizes the autonomy of local regions to make decisions in those areas where it is practicable. This would move the locus of control from remote decision-makers with little or no connection to the area affected directly to the people who best know their situation.

Perhaps the solution is to give the states more authenticity by revising their borders to reflect the composition and distribution the nation's population and the character of the local ecology rather than conform to an area established for political reasons. This will emphasize what some social scientists call “the experience of place” and reinforce the tendency for people to identify with their local area; a development with positive results for ecologically sustainable behavior as individuals who feel a logical connection with their region are more likely to extend their mental boundaries to encompass that region as a home and thus treat it with more care