In the theocon's arguments last night, he cited Abraham Lincoln as saying that no state has the right to do wrong, as part of an argument that moral laws he supports should be mandatory on all US citizens, regardless of the tenth amendment, or their own state's preferred policy. His specific quote was: "The states do not have the right to do wrong." Santorum has used this quote before. Andrew Malcolm does his best to save him:
Actually, it's "No one has the right to choose to do what is wrong," widely attributed (particularly by those in the antiabortion movement) to Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, supposedly said in response to Douglas' assertion that slave owners had the right to choose to own slaves, which was another fight rooted in the 10th Amendment.
From this record of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln:
I suppose that in reference both to [the] actual existence [of slavery] in the nation, and to our constitutional obligations, we have no right at all to disturb it in the States where it exists, and we profess that we have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the right to do it. We go further than that; we don’t propose to disturb it where, in one instance, we think the Constitution would permit us …
So I say again, that in regard to the arguments that are made, when Judge Douglas says he “don’t care whether slavery is voted up or voted down,” whether he means that as an individual expression of sentiment, or only as a sort of statement of his views on national policy, it is alike true to say that he can thus argue logically if he don’t see anything wrong in it; but he cannot say so logically if he admits that slavery is wrong.
He cannot say that he would as soon see a wrong voted up as voted down. When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical, if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.
A mite subtler a debating point than Santorum's blanket hostility to any states' rights to veer away from what he sees as the eternal truths of Catholic natural law.
The Dish 