Doug Henwood wrote:
> Funny, I thought suffrage
> applied to people, not states.
The myth that states are or ought to be independent entities -- virtually people -- was carefully inscribed in the Constitution (for mostly malicious purposes) and has become such "second nature" that people like Margaret can ask in all innocence, "Do we want the big states to tyrannize over the small states?" The answer of course is yes. Outside the ranchers and those hoodwinked by the ranchers, the overwhelming majority of the people of Wyoming would love for bigger states to "tyrranize" over them. The key image to the material purpose of "states rights" resides in the fact that such rights were used for a century to preserve the right of southern whites to lynch black people. The use of the rope and the gasoline can was inscribed in the Constitution as a sacred right.
Incidentally, once one escapes the mystique of language as somehow indicating an entity created by God the "right" of self-determination for geographical fragments like Kosovo or the 11 states of the confederacy simply disappears. The map is a better indication of the "units" for such self-determination than language or heredity. And a look at the map would seem to indicate that the proper unit for self-determination in Kosovo's part of the world would include (1) All of the former Yugoslavia (2) Albania (3) Bulgaria, and (4) part of Italy. *That* would make a sensible nation.
Carrol