A line is not a border is not a line…

A long-ago memory: I said something to my dad about crossing the “border” between Iowa and a neighboring state (probably either Illinois or Minnesota), and he corrected me. “It’s a state line, not a border,” he said.

I am not sure what I thought that meant when he said it some 70 years ago. But I have often thought of it recently with all the talk of the rights and powers of the several states vs. the rights and power of our federal government.

A lot of that talk goes back to the 19th century, when our nation’s divisions over slavery led southern states to emphasize the “sovereignty” of each state over what it considered its own internal business. That talk culminated in the Civil War. It never went away, and enjoyed a powerful revival in the mid-twentieth century in the desegregation struggles.

Is the “United States” in fact fifty sovereign states separated by borders that need defending in order to protect each state’s own values and interests?

The issue is complex, and I am no expert. “Line” is probably not strong enough to describe how the states relate to one another within our union. Certainly not “line in the sand,” subject to being moved or obliterated in the breeze. Isolated states merely in the guise of being “United States” were not key to winning two world wars, which may have influenced my father’s thinking when he said that to me.

And “states’ rights?” How do “states’ rights” and individual rights as American citizens interface? If a state’s rights can take away or deny an individual’s rights, then what sense does it make to speak of being citizens of “United States?”

I don’t buy all the revived talk of the unassailable nature of “states’ rights.” I know there’s constitutional basis for some such talk, but most of what I am hearing sounds like a cover-up for denying human rights, as it always has been.