19651 EDITORIAL COMMENT

States at the Crossroads

529

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is composed of ex- cerpts from a speech by Terry Sanford, former governor of North Carolina, be- fore the Midwestern Governors’ Confer- ence last summer.

HE states have a major role to T play: They serve as the vehicles for such federal-state programs as major highway construction, welfare, water pollution control, the new con- servation program and others. They run our courts and our prisons; they have the largest responsibilities for education.

Further, the states have long served as laboratories in the development of governmental programs. Whether suc- cessful or not, state efforts highlight problems and possible solutions to them which are often taken over and modified by other states and the na- tional government. Politically, the states are the focal point in our sys- tem. Our national political parties are more or less quadrennial coalitions of state political parties with similar names.

But success depends on the energy with which the states attack their problems, It is when the states fail to fulfill their role in such areas as education, civil rights and liberties, enhancing the opportunities for the poor, and others, that the federal government moves into the vacuum. I t is when the states are not respon- sive, are not laboratories of experi- mentation, do not reach all the people because they are either oppressive or

not representative, that the states for- feit their strongest argument for a future.

The fact is that some who have ar- gued loudest and shrillest for states’ rights have done more to undermine states’ rights than anyone else in the Union. These few have used the term as a shield against responsible action, rather than the spear of innovative improvement of the lives of their people.

There is too quick a tendency to blame the federal government for our own shortcomings and the courts for our own lack of responsibility. The new voting rights bill and the reap- portionment decisions should have never been necessary. That they oc- curred is more a sign of state neglect of duty than federal usurpation of authority.

For, whether we acknowledge it or not, the realities of American growth and the demands of the American people are recasting American gov- ernment along new and more exacting lines. For America is, as James Madi- son prophesied, a system of interact- ing federalism . . . and the influence of the states will fluctuate with their responsiveness to the needs of the times and the demands of the people.

The most compelling argument for continuing and strengthening the role of the states lies not in what has been done but in what must yet be done.