Well, if you want some actual proof that Rick Perry said nothing particularly objectionable when he restated Thomas Jefferson’s premise that the people have the right to alter or abolish their form of government – or even dissolve the times that bind them to one another – here it is. Rather than speak about anything actually offensive in Perry’s words, the local hack columnist from the Houston Chronicle is reduced to complaining about so-called “code words”.

Perry again showed his lack of regard for the not-so-subtle nuances of history when he expressed his anger at the federal government by chopping the air with his fist and chanting: “I’m talking about states’ rights, states’ rights, states’ rights!” He said the constitutional protection of states’ rights unfortunately “have melted away over time.” The crowd loved it, but there is a large segment of Texas citizens who know bitterly that the term “states’ rights” was long militantly employed to fight the melting away of such “rights” as state sanctioning of slavery, enforcement of school segregation and, in Texas, the definition of political parties as private associations permitted to exclude non-whites primaries. There are certain rights of states that deserve to be protected, but a politician who wants to be leader of all the people doesn’t use terms so tightly bound to such an ugly history.

Now columnist Rick Casey certainly was within his rights to criticize Perry’s statement. He even had some good points among his earlier analysis. But in the end, he decided to play the race card. Casey, not Perry, decided to take statements that had not one word about race in them and transform them into a call for a return to slavery, segregation, and the denial of voting rights. That is fundamentally dishonest on his part – as is his attempt to take the evils imposed upon Texas by the Democrat Party for over a century and use them as a basis to undermine the essential nature of the federal system created in our nation’s Constitution.

Mr. Casey, states’ rights are an essential part of our constitutional order. While that term has been abused in the past by some in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable, that does not mean that all mention of or appeal to that concept is illegitimate. What is illegitimate, though, is an attempt to turn the discussion of tax policy, the extent of federal power, and the nature of our federal union into some sort of covert appeal to racism.