"If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion"
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Wilson’s line is a cold shower for anyone still treating “states’ rights” as a live wire rather than a familiar costume. He’s not arguing the merits of decentralization; he’s declaring it institutionally extinct. The first sentence does the heavy lifting with a brutal little test of realism: if devolution were truly feasible, political actors with every incentive to grab local control would have already done it. That’s not just skepticism, it’s a theory of the state disguised as common sense: power, once centralized, rarely walks itself back without a crisis forcing the retreat.
The subtext is aimed at a particular American ritual. “States’ rights” often enters debate as a moral principle, but Wilson frames it as a measurable coalition-and-courts question. He strips away the romance and points to the two arenas that matter in modern governance: constitutional doctrine and mass consent. By naming the Supreme Court and public opinion, he’s signaling that federalism isn’t primarily an abstract architecture; it’s whatever the dominant institutions are willing to enforce and voters are willing to tolerate. Without those pillars, the slogan becomes nostalgia.
Contextually, Wilson is speaking from the late-20th-century reality of an expanded federal state: civil rights enforcement, national welfare policy, and regulatory regimes that knitted the country together through money and mandates. His intent is diagnostic and disciplining: stop promising a rollback that lacks the legal runway and the cultural mandate. If you want devolution, he implies, you don’t need better rhetoric; you need a different era.
The subtext is aimed at a particular American ritual. “States’ rights” often enters debate as a moral principle, but Wilson frames it as a measurable coalition-and-courts question. He strips away the romance and points to the two arenas that matter in modern governance: constitutional doctrine and mass consent. By naming the Supreme Court and public opinion, he’s signaling that federalism isn’t primarily an abstract architecture; it’s whatever the dominant institutions are willing to enforce and voters are willing to tolerate. Without those pillars, the slogan becomes nostalgia.
Contextually, Wilson is speaking from the late-20th-century reality of an expanded federal state: civil rights enforcement, national welfare policy, and regulatory regimes that knitted the country together through money and mandates. His intent is diagnostic and disciplining: stop promising a rollback that lacks the legal runway and the cultural mandate. If you want devolution, he implies, you don’t need better rhetoric; you need a different era.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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