States Versus Federal: a Pattern to Follow

     American history is filled with disputes between the state and federal, between the individual and the collective, starting before and during its founding as was the case of Shay's Rebellion going all the way up to modern times in the marijuana debate. Perhaps the most pressing question in relation to this dynamic unique to America is what is the right choice. The question is not what is lawful or not, as that is already evident: the federal always supersedes the state in terms of the rights of the citizen and influence. What is still ambiguous is when it is considered okay to go against the will of the collective. For example, when Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation that was stated to free all the slaves(although the Thirteenth Amendment was the real cause), many of the southern states went into open rebellion and seceded. Through the luxury of historical hindsight, it is universally agreed upon that the South was wrong to do so. Often times, liberals laud the South for going against a federal edict, going so far as to call them traitors(a word that is used too often throughout history), with Southerners being equally preposterous in their continued support for the Confederation and of secession. Although it appears that liberals have a sort of hypocritical streak: they are against secession when it applies to the southern states, but favor the Washington and Colorado initiatives to legalize marijuana. Clearly it seems that they only favor their agenda and are against other viewpoints. Although this point is valid to a large degree the issue, as clarified before, is not the clear subordination of state authority, but when civil disobedience is "correct." For example, it is virtually guaranteed that marijuana will be legalized in the U.S., probably in the next twenty years. As such, history will look back on Washington and Colorado's actions as revolutionary. In contrast, history widely condemns the the southern rebellion. The ultimate distinction between the two lies in the moral high ground, that is to say, one side was in favor of more rights towards a certain group of people. Such a trend has been the case throughout all of -recorded history in general; as time goes on, people tend to see eye-to-eye and abandon "conservative" values in response to modernity, the very same force that the people who are in favor of continuity enjoy. Thus it is clear that the side that favors greater rights, exemplified through precedence, is correct. While this standard may not seem fair, it has ironically held constant. In today's policy-making, a rule as plain as this cannot be ignored.