Justice & Law Quote by Jon Porter

The phrase "States do have rights" is doing two jobs at once: it flatters a patriotic instinct for local control while quietly laundering a much more specific agenda through a noble-sounding principle. Jon Porter isn’t offering a constitutional seminar; he’s building a shield. By invoking "States" and then narrowing to "local communities", he turns a contested policy choice into a matter of deference. The subtext is: Washington should back off, not because the federal government is wrong on the merits, but because it’s impolite to interfere.

Notice the careful sequencing. He starts with his own institutional credibility ("as a Member of this body"), then asserts belief ("I believe firmly") rather than evidence. Belief reads as conviction, not calculation, even as the line pivots to the real justification: "allow these businesses to prosper". That euphemism - businesses, prosper - blurs what these enterprises are and what harms or controversies might be attached to them. It’s a classic political move: abstract the principle, soften the object, then staple on the clincher.

That clincher is the economy. "Big part of their economy" turns local dependence into moral permission: if a community profits, it deserves autonomy; if outsiders object, they’re framed as elitist meddlers threatening livelihoods. The rhetoric treats the local decision as democratic and settled, even though "allow" implies regulatory choices that can be revisited. In context, this is less a defense of federalism than a strategic appeal to it - a way to protect an industry by recoding it as community self-determination.