"Here's a state of things!" So sings Yum Yum in the second act of The Mikado. Had Gilbert and Sullivan written an operetta about America, Gilbert -- the lyricist -- might have written: "Here's a thing of states."

Time was when people of territories desperately longed for statehood, wanting to be parts of the New World's growing nation. Then by the mid-19th century several states attempted permanent secession from the Union over the slavery issue, but, thanks to Abraham Lincoln, the Union was preserved. Now, though, several states -- notably Texas -- are making secession noises.

One tactic is for a governor or legislature to declare that a given federal law will not be enforced in that state. It's called nullification. Another is for a political figure to insist that this question or that issue with regard to public policy -- say on gay marriage or reproductive rights or education curricula -- be left to the governors and legislators of the of several states to decide.

Whenever that knell sounds, it calls to mind the dread idea of "states' rights," which in the 1940s and 1950s translated into regimes of institutional racism. In other words, State A. treated African Americans as if they had never been emancipated even as State B. treated them under the constitutional promise of equal justice under law.

The thing of states begets a terrible state of things.

Walk across the border between State A. and State B., and there is found no change in vegetation, wildlife or topography. It's one land. Why then, for example, should a woman be free legally to exercise her reproductive rights under Roe v. Wade across that invisible line in State A. but not one foot away in State B.?

Why should a state legislature be able to decide that the children in its public schools will be taught creationism along side of or even instead of evolutionary biology when another state mandates the teaching of actual science? Why can a state enact laws permitting discrimination against those of the LGBT community? Why can one state make it more difficult for minorities and senior citizens to vote while in the state next there would be no problem?

Is such a state of things in keeping with the urtext of the United States Constitution? We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In the days of military conscription, men were drafted without regard to their states of residence. They were drafted into the United States armed forces, not that of an individual state. The draft and the reasons for it were not necessarily happy developments, but both threw together men from many national locales, thus strengthening the national bond. That was a good thing.

When the first of the month rolls around, retirees' Social Security benefits are paid out to people in Dubuque, Chillicothe, Ashtabula, Peoria, Selma, Orono, Sault Ste. Marie, Oshkosh, Tempe, Boise and thousands of other postal addresses from Maine to California to Alaska and Hawaii -- not because they live in one state or another, but because they are Americans.

When in baseball stadia all over the country opening day begins with the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," it is the national anthem that one hears and the stars and stripes that one sees run up the flagpole. Baseball is called the "American pastime," not the Pennsylvania or the Ohio or the Missouri pastime.

The strength of America is in its unity, not in its self-consciously separate states. Its greatness -- both past and potential -- arose from that unity and, one hopes, will rise again. Thus should laws regarding justice and human dignity be uniform and uniformly enforced across the country. The guarantees implicit and explicit in the 14th and 15th Amendments must be granted equally across state borders.

In particular, the guarantees of reproductive rights in Roe v. Wade and the right to marry regardless of gender may not be legislated away by rogue state legislatures. It is un-American so to do. Let us forfend Balkanization. 

Moreover, the Congress of the United States is seriously dysfunctional in its own right without piling on to the law-making process 50 more such bodies at the state level. Besides, it's costly. We have U.S. senators -- two per state, regardless of its population -- and 435 members of the U.S. House representing citizens of the several states. And anyway, isn't Congress the proper venue for legislation concerning such matters as fundamental human rights?

I really don't give a damn about what the Neanderthal Know-Nothings of Kansas, for example, believe about the validity of Genesis or the social acceptability of misogyny. They must not be permitted to condemn their school-age children and the women of their state to medieval conditions. There simply are no states' rights that justify such treatment.

I am an American, and I am both proud to be one and also from time to time humiliated by how America has conducted itself without my consent. All four of my grandparents along with my mother were immigrants by choice. I happen to be a Michiganian by birth and upbringing. I have lived in Michigan all of my life, save those brief years in graduate school. But I do not tell people in other countries that I am a Michiganian. I say that I am an American.

So the thing of states makes for an unfortunate state of things.

Woody Guthrie had it right:

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island,

From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters,

This land was made for you and me.