Subsequent constitutional amendments also abolished slavery and the state- and individual-level violence that had maintained it. The Civil War established that the lawful use of violence does not extend to armed state secession. Yet none has spawned more debate, confusion and conflict within America itself, right down to the present day. No constitutional provision better expresses an essential difference between the state as Europeans understood it and the “republic” America’s founders conceived. (Whitney Shefte,McKenna Ewen,Dalton Bennett,Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)
Paul, Minn., and across the nation grapple with how to move on from the deaths of two black men at the hands of police as well as the loss of five police officers all in one week's time.
Indeed, in the founding era, the federal government exercised only limited power to establish a standing military or law-enforcement apparatus it relied heavily on state cooperation, and state resources, to provide what we know today as “national security.”Īnd then there’s the Second Amendment, which gives “the people” a right to “keep and bear arms,” thus legitimizing nongovernmental violence, not only by groups - from slave patrols to pioneers to sheriffs’ posses - but also by individuals, from hunters to homeowners. The Constitution provides for the legitimate use of violence by a federal government, but also by the 50 semi-sovereign entities represented in Washington. What it doesn’t have, crucially, is a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence by a central authority. Among defining attributes of a state, the United States possesses a territory, a flag, laws - and courts and bureaucrats to enforce them.
The question seems strange this nation’s full official name suggests not only a state, but also a union of states. Here’s the issue before us, after Dallas: Is the United States a state?