Refighting the Civil War: the correct rhetorical response

Paperwight makes a good point in the discussion of Dave’s Ann Coulter post.  It makes perfect sense for Coulter to recycle stale anecdotes from Reagan-era Michael Medved columns, because this will still seem fresh to a constituency still seething with resentment over the Reconstruction Amendments.

One often hears from reactionaries that the Civil War was about “states’ rights” as opposed to slavery, leading rational people to point that slavery really was the triggering cause. However, the neo-Confederates have a point.  “States’ rights” is, of course, a constitutionally meaningless term.  In the context of American constitutionalism, to talk about governments having rights is a giant non-sequitur. States have powers; rights belong to individuals.  What “states’ rights” means is “rhetorical cover for policies that are completely indefensible on their merits,” and when one understands this it makes perfect sense to say that southern secession was about “states’ rights.”

But more importantly, it’s baffling that it’s apologists for apartheid police sta…er, “federalism” that bring this up.  The obvious response to this line of reasoning is “sure, the Civil War was fought for states’ rights.  And states’ rights lost. Better luck at the track, assholes!” The Civil War seems to be the only conflict in which history was largely written by the losers…