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by krapp
608 days ago
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I'm inherently mistrustful of arguments for "state's rights" that don't explicitly state what rights are being advocated for, that the existence of a Federal government is standing in the way of. It's usually something gross and regressive, like wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy. Otherwise it would be something normal they could just, you know, pass a law about. Because states do have rights, they just don't have absolute sovereignty. |
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This would be more meaningful if the federal government wasn't involved in everyone's lives to the degree that most people's idea of state sovereignty ends at issuing driver's licenses and license plates.
In general, a call for "states' rights" is a call for the federal government to act in line with the supreme law of the land that is the Constitution and restore the concept of "laboratories of democracy" that states ought to be. Instead, what we have is a federal government that supposedly has the legal authority to regulate activity that crossed no state boundaries and harmed no one[0].
> wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy
I'm not aware of any recent efforts at the state level, at least more seriously than someone trying to make the papers in a primary election, to achieve such goals. Do you have any examples?
[0]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111