More lefty double standards...

...this time from David Broder of the Washington Post:

There is an air of desperate improvisation to Sen. Harry Reid's scheme to pass a “public option” as part of health care reform, but at the same time provide an easy exemption for any state that objects to it. The warning flags ought to be flying for anyone who can count to three — let alone 60.
...
Consider the precedent that would be set if a major piece of social legislation were to be passed with a states' rights provision. Imagine, for example, FDR had signed the first Social Security law with the proviso that any states with Republican governors and legislatures could exempt themselves from its coverage.
This might have seemed a minimal concession to conservative opinion. But what would have followed? How long before some states would have demanded an exemption from the wage and hour law that established a minimum wage? And what about the clamor in a broad swath of the country when the first civil rights law was passed?

I'll avoid the easy snark about how Texas might have an even lower cost of living with no minimum wage law and its residents would be able to take the Social Security tax money that's taken out of their salaries and invest it somewhere besides the Ponzi scheme SS has become. I will say, though, that I find it quite disingenuous for Broder to lump the civil rights laws in with Social Security and the wage and hour laws. The latter two were more or less examples of government stepping in to take care things that should be left to citizens themselves, while the former was government stepping in to protect citizens' basic rights that were outlined in the Declaration of Independence. And then there's the matter of the patchwork of gun laws in different parts of the country, many of which clearly violate the Second Amendment to the Constitution. I would bet my next check that if the Second Amendment is incorporated, Broder and his ilk are going to be saying that certain cities and states should still be able to deny their citizens the basic right of effective self-defense under the rubric of "one size does not fit all" or as our illustrious Dear Leader *hawk-spit* put it, "what works in Cheyenne does not work in Chicago" -- as if residents of Chicago should not be afforded the same rights as those of Cheyenne. Either it's true in all cases or none. No one should get to pick and choose.