As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Frederick Wertz looks at Luigi Marco Bassani’s “Jefferson, Calhoun and States’ Rights: The Uneasy Europeanization of American Politics,” from Telos 114 (Winter 1999).

In an enlightening piece, Luigi Marco Bassani reopens the door on an all-too-closed chapter of American political discourse: states’ rights. He poses a question that he sees to be the crux of one of the most permanent issues in American history: “In 1776, did the thirteen colonies separate themselves from Great Britain collectively or singularly?” This question, regarding the role of the Federal government in American society, was the essence of American politics for nearly a century. Though political debate and war in the 19th century resulted in an irreversible consolidation of federal power, the issue still crops up in the American political ethos during times of crisis or extreme polarization. Bassani usefully highlights the two most important proponents of states’ rights, Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun.

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