| > It's not like that kind of public opinion is uniform among the entire population of a state. Plenty of people in a state you might think of as not trusting the federal government, e.g. most states in the American south, have sizable minority populations that historically have depended heavily on the federal government's power for protection of their constitutional rights. Yes, and like most other nation-states, minorities lose out to the majority. The question is: at what level is that acceptable? At a broad enough level, a tyranny of the majority is unacceptable, because there are no alternatives. At a low enough level, a tyranny of the majority is acceptable because it's more feasible for one to shop around. This is one of the reasons large corporate monopolies are considered bad. > Not to mention, the most meaningful political differences in the United States today are between rural and and urban areas. If you look at Treemaps of the US election in 2016 (weighted by population to accurately capture rural counties), there are some states where rural voters are largely on the same page as urban voters[1][2][3][4], and some where most of the state embraces a rural way of life, and hence its internal policy is better suited to that culture [5][6][7][8]. For states that are internally polarized[9][10], applying subsidiarity yet another time might be the prudent solution, but that's up to them. Also, somewhat paradoxically, in Alaska, the urban centers typically vote like rural voters in the rest of the Union, and Alaska's rural voters vote like urban voters in the rest of the Union[11]. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [4] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [5] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [6] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [7] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [8] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [9] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [10] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_presid... [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... |
