The constitutional concept of “states’ rights” pertains to the division of
power between local and national authorities, and serves to protect the states
from the Federal government; it does not grant to a state government an
unlimited, arbitrary power over its citizens or the privilege of abrogating the
citizens’ individual rights.
[George Wallace] is not a defender of individual rights, but merely of
states’ rights—which is far, far from being the same thing. When he
denounces “Big Government,” it is not the unlimited, arbitrary power of the
state that he is denouncing, but merely its centralization—and he seeks to
place the same unlimited, arbitrary power in the hands of many little
governments. The break-up of a big gang into a number of warring small gangs is
not a return to a constitutional system nor to individual rights nor to law and
order.