Letting the states make their own decisions on issues not addressed by the constitution is a perfectly viable solution. Not sure why that would be particularly difficult.
"You give" implies the ability to decide that. The problem is that there's always the threat of people such as slavers, religious fanatics, ethnonationalists etc coming to power. The more that power is centralized, the more they can do with it.
And yes, conversely, when power is decentralized, you don't get "benevolent dictators" who might otherwise do some good. My point is that this argument doesn't really work if applied consistently in all cases - or, at least, not without more digging into the specifics of costs vs benefits. Personally, I'm not convinced that centralization is a net good overall, if only because it makes large standing armies possible.
the civil war was about slavery
If anything the federal government was too accommodating and it still wasn't enough for the slave masters who dominated southern politics
Sure it was about slavery as the wedge issue over which to decide whether you can leave the union. This sort of reactionary rhetoric just skirts over the surface.
It's not like the confederacy was fighting for slavery and to be part of the union. Both Kentucky and Delaware were happy with the status quo. The confederacy wanted both slavery and to leave the union, which they perceived to be their right.
The federal government at the time was much smaller than the current one and much less empowered.
Speaking as a foreigner who immigrated to the US, I don't see Americans as a single nation. Maybe that was the case at some point in the past, but there are too many cultural divisions by now that transcend compatriotism.
A federal state as a tight union of autonomous non-sovereign states is viable. We have plenty of examples for that. An EU-style loose union of sovereign states also works, if only barely. However, there is no evidence that a loose union of non-sovereign states would work in the present-day world. It might work, but the question is very complex, and we can't hope for a confident answer without actually trying it.
It’s too easy for citizens to move between states. You no longer need to cross the Atlantic in a Conestoga wagon. This freedom of movement punishes states that attempt to increase their quality of life too far above the national average far more than it punishes low-quality states with brain drain.
It would only punish the states who would attempt to increase the quality of life for people who don't contribute to said quality. Why would others be worried? The more people move in, the better.
Or much, much worse for the locals if housing construction can’t keep pace with the population influx. Or your state does the right thing and somehow solves its homelessness problem and then homeless from around the nation arrive (or are shipped off by their home states) and overwhelm the system.
Well, if housing construction cannot keep up it would balance out the quality of life, right? People will move as long as negative QOL delta from expensive housing is, in their view, less than positive QOL delta from other sources.
As for the homelessness example, that is my point exactly, and the general problem with welfare state. You have to choose - restrict the access to welfare state specifically, restrict movement generally, or don't have a welfare state. I do not view welfare state as a sustainable QOL improvement (or a QOL improvement at all), so I am in favor of the last option. For me, people moving in to abuse a local welfare option is a positive development. Contrary to GGP(?), the localities that get punished are not punished for "improving quality of life"... they are punished for stupid policies.
Is this supposed to be a trick question? For example, if you tax people and build a highway (or a rail line), someone driving on it/riding it but not paying taxes does not contribute to this particular QOL improvement.
Generally, there are plenty of people who do not contribute to society in any major way (e.g. even taxes), or even directly harm it.
Well, apparently you are using a very exotic definition of "quality of life", especially in the original context (of the states increasing the quality of life).
For any specific improvement in quality of life, as it is commonly understood (and whether it's measured for an average person/median person/the most miserable person/...) there's very obviously somebody who doesn't contribute to it. Not literally everyone helps run a homeless shelter, plant a forest, build a highway, or run a non-corrupt judiciary. Similarly, there are quite obviously some people who detract from any particular improvement, either directly (whether it's a corrupt cop decreasing public trust, a burglar decreasing safety, a factory fouling up the air, a hiker littering in the park), or by using up a public resource more than they contribute to it.
There's no reason why somebody's combined contribution cannot be a net negative. So, it's very easy to find such a person.
The history of the US has been a history of power centralization for good reason, unfortunately. The experiment of decentralized state level authority has been found wanting to the tune of a civil war and a Great depression, both of which were addressed by centralizing federal power.
Power centralization is rarely predicated on reasons that include the benefit of common man. The US doesn't appear much different in that regard, either.
There were two major events in US history that caused significant Federal power consolidation. Technically three, if you count the collapse of the government that was structured under the Articles of the Confederacy prior to the Constitution because it's lack of tax authority meant that it couldn't deal with the war debts that have been accrued from 1776 onward.
The first was the civil war, and federal power consolidated for obvious reasons. Easily half the states demonstrated that they could not be trusted to run their own affairs and protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution.
The second was more subtle. The reinterpretation of the Constitution that occurred during the Great Depression granted the federal government the authority to regulate commerce within States under the interstate commerce clause. This authority drives everything from farm subsidies to drug regulation. It is a piece of federal power that people can reasonably argue about the virtue of, but in a modern comment deeply interconnected world it's reasonable to believe that the federal government needs limited central economic planning authority for the country to flourish.
>Easily half the states demonstrated that they could not be trusted to run their own affairs and protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution.
So instead we have a more centralized federal government that cannot be trusted to protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution ( that same post civil war government interned the Japanese, allows police to search any vehicle with the "signal" of a dog, and instead of enslaving blacks just disproportionately tosses them to wither away in prison instead. Instead of enslaving brown people here, now our kinder gentler federal government just blow them up in foreign countries instead. )
>The reinterpretation of the Constitution that occurred during the Great Depression granted the federal government the authority to regulate commerce within States under the interstate commerce clause. This authority drives everything from farm subsidies to drug regulation.
That's the first time I've seen the war on drugs used to justify the centralization of power. I suppose we need a new civil war against the "untrustworthy" states that have legalized marijuana so affairs can be run the right way.
It's pretty "reasonable" to believe the federal government DOESN't need the authority they currently have.
You make an excellent point regarding federal drug law as it relates to state-by-state legalization. It's fascinating that here we have a case of the executive blatantly refusing to enforce the law, but Congress also blatantly failing to press the issue (which they could) because they know doing so would be incredibly unpopular... But at the same time, refraining from codifying that policy into law, because doing so would be incredibly unpopular with the percentage of the electorate that still believes marijuana should be illegal.
> that same post civil war government interned the Japanese, allows police to search any vehicle with the "signal" of a dog, and instead of enslaving blacks just disproportionately tosses them to wither away in prison instead. Instead of enslaving brown people here, now our kinder gentler federal government just blow them up in foreign countries instead.
I would say the 1st and last examples are examples of the federal government making a very bad call. The others are primarily the fault of local governments.
There was another but we're still grappling with it. Nuclear weapons, and modern weaponry, the needs of real-time modern war, have transferred powers to the Executive that did not exist before in practice. It was never intended, after all, for the President to, semi-literally, have a button to press that ends the world. It arose dynamically out of a changing response to the needs of the early cold war, and has become effectively part of the unwritten constitution, without it ever really being explicitly considered how it should fit into the puzzle.
How did a lack of federal power cause the Great Depression? I can see how it took a strong Federal government to do that the states could not to end the Depression, but not how that lack of power was a cause of getting into that specific mess.
Lack of federal power didn't cause the Great Depression, it showed that there were peacetime problems that states operating economically independently could not address.
How well did the states do at running their own vaccine programs? How well did it work when some states recognized gay marriage and others did not? Having nationwide consistency is important for many issues.
The gay marriage issue is a great example of exactly the opposite of your point. States one by one recognizing gay marriage and proving that it wasn't going to cause the collapse of society is the only reason it was recognized on a national level. The same process is currently happening with marijuana prohibition.
the first amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
the federal govt should have zero benefits tied to marriage. By having benefits tied to marriage they have essentially established religions that have male-female marriage as the default religion of the country.
if taxes, inheritance etc were not tied to marriage and instead were done with standard contracts between 2, 3 or N people (civil unions). Then the marriage problem would go away.
Your reading is basically that the first amendment prohibits an otherwise permissible state law because voters support that law based on their belief in Christianity. But it would be fine for voters to support a law based on their belief in say socialism or secular humanism. That’s exactly backward—it singles out religious faith as an improper basis for supporting an otherwise permissible law.
Regardless, that clause is about the federal government not interfering with official state churches (“establishments of religion”) which existed until the 1830s.
>States one by one recognizing gay marriage and proving that it wasn't going to cause the collapse of society is the only reason it was recognized on a national level.
You're leaving out the massive fights from states that did not want to recognize gay marriage, which could have easily gone the other way. The same process will repeat with marijuana prohibition and the states fighting it may succeed this time. What would have happened if gay marriage stayed as a patchwork of legal statuses? What will happen in the long run when marijuana is legal in many states but continues to send you to prison for decades in others? This is not a stable situation and the exact reason we need the federal government to do things instead of leaving it up to the states.
>> we need the federal government to do things instead of leaving it up to the states.
Unless it concerns powers specifically given to the federal government by the US constitution that would be unconstitutional: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." (10th Amendment).
If you do not like the laws in your state, vote to change the laws.
If you do not like the laws in other states, discuss and persuade the voters of those states to change their laws.
The constitution is a broad documented to be interpreted
It's not a step by step manual or grocery list
> If you do not like the laws in other states, discuss and persuade the voters of those states to change their laws.
Or better yet and occasionally easier get the federal government to change the law for the whole country, benefiting everyone
Why do you think the federal government is going to make smarter decisions than the average state government? I don't want to roll the dice on the feds making the right call every time. When the government makes a bad call I want the option of leaving and going somewhere less dumb. That's not an option if the dumbassery comes from Washington. It was federal overreach that made DOMA possible in the first place, as well as marijuana prohibition.
>When the government makes a bad call I want the option of leaving and going somewhere less dumb.
This is only an option for the most privileged among us. What are the options for someone who is gay and doesn't have the means to move to a less bigoted state?
Moving to another state in America is something poor people do all the time. Regardless, does a modest cost in a small minority justify putting 9 elites in DC in charge of the moral law of the whole country?
The right of people to govern themselves is important even if we disagree with how they do it. Note the EU Human Rights Court came to the exact opposite conclusion a year after Obergefell, finding no right to marriage for same sexual couples under the EU convention on human rights.
If you look at constitutional law in western Europe, no country has a court that intrudes as much into social issues as the US Supreme Court.
Far greater than the options of someone who is gay and would have to move to a different country instead of just a different state. For example, the existence of sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants is entirely dependent on a lack of federal power to override the will of the states.
Yes, unfortunately "states rights" has become a rallying cry for racism and hatred, but the original framing of this country is that the state's are basically supposed to be much stronger than the Federal government.
I don't really know whether we can unwind the federal governments grasp on things without basically destabilizing the whole thing though at this point (and admittedly, I'm not sure the majority would want to).
Not so much "fell apart" as "intentionally overthrown by capitalists when they didn't agree with policies determined through democracy". Madison and his co-conspirators didn't approve of the deliberate currency depreciation and other measures voted in by farmers who fought, unpaid, for years in a war that benefited rich elites and came home to find their farms repossessed by debtors and tax collectors. So long as the various states operated as competing democracies, they were subject to the wishes of their citizens. The constitution, written in secret by a cabal of rich white men, put an end to all of that, as it was intended to do.
Since when has "states rights" become a rallying cry for racism or hatred?
I'm really tired of people saying stuff like this : <insert vaguely conservative stance here> has become a rallying cry for racism and transphobia and bigotry.
Its really obnoxious and disingenuous. Give me one example of someone using states rights as a call for racism and hatred.
My guess is you probably only said what you just said because you've read enough articles by blue-haired liberal arts graduates with a sub 100 IQ.
> Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
> The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union...
> The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States.
Little did they know that all commerce would be interstate commerce by the 20th century
The Federal government has subjugated all states, and merely tolerates their grasps at 10th amendment autonomy as it derives power from the collection of states. But it is more well funded, controls the currency, and has more land and resources under its title. States don't matter.
The states really screwed this up when certain ones decided their love for cotton and hatred for brown people was more important than their sovereignty.