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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
On the orgin of the "states rights" idea for people outside the US: Each of the original 13 colonies were founded independently of each other and acted autonomously. Back then and up through the Civil War era, Americans didn't define themselves as just "American", they identified as "Virginian" or "a New Yorker" or "Rhode Islander", etc. When we first started to come together as the United States we were basically a coalition of separate republics and no one wanted the interest of one state to have primacy over the other or for a small state to have less of a voice than a large one, etc, etc. The founding fathers also feared having a distant, authoritarian central government that was too strong (having just fought off one) but it was obvious that our first constitution, the Articles of Confederation (which gave nearly all the power to the states) wasn't working. The federal system we came up with and solidified in the Constitution was ultimately, after the result of several compromises, a balance of power sharing between the federal government and the state governments.
(Edit: And unfortunately, yes this did also include the provision that states without slavery should be able to overrule states that did have it. But if you care to be a little sympathetic, you'd have been asking the South to give up a huge portion of their income and the new nation was badly strapped for cash. There was a chance it might have died out on its own, but then the cotton gin came along in 1794 and cotton plantations boomed and things got worse for slaves.)
I will say that we are probably the largest (in area) country that has maintained a liberal democracy for a signifigant period of time and that power sharing is likely a factor in our ability to administer it. Only in the last several decades have we had the fast travel and instant communication that makes administering this large of a land mass non-trivial.
Re: Ben Carson: We have a trope that describes him: Crosses the Line Twice.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:01:31 PM by Elle
I would say that slavery and the larger issue of race was a federal issue from the start of the nation (as it was literally written into the Constitution in the form of the 3/5ths compromise), and that therefore federal action to stop Jim Crow laws was not an overreach.
However, I also believe that the Jim Crow laws would ultimately have been overturned without federal action.
Especially when it is supposedly evilbadwrong tyranny for the federal government to do certain things but fine and dandy if it's the state government doing the exact same thing. You'd think oppression is oppression, regardless of how local or global the government.
Funny that every Republican cites this as though it means something, given that it happened before the great switch under LBJ and Nixon.
And you believe that based on what? Perhaps better yet, when do you believe it would have happened—yesterday?
edited 15th Nov '16 12:57:12 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Southern Democrats, mind you. And despite what Republicans would have you believe, the parties were very different back then.
This
does a pretty good job explaining it.
...What reason do you have to believe that?
Edit: Somewhat
'd. Ambar's right, though - how long would we have had to wait? And how long would people have had to suffer for it?
edited 15th Nov '16 12:59:40 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!That's irrelevant to the point that people shouldn't have to suffer until the bigoted states magically decide that they won't oppress black people anymore.
You've pretty continuously ignored people's observations that the ideals you're proposing are implicitly saying "well, it doesn't really matter that minorities will have to suffer for who knows how long, because people will come around to freeing them...sometime, maybe?". It comes across as very tone-deaf and callous to people who might still be suffering from oppression of their states if not for the government intervening.
If you don't want people to call conservatives bigoted maybe you should think about the implications of what some conservatives say, and how you would feel if you were part of a minority that was hated for no reason than just existing, and that people continuously refused to give you equal rights compared to white and non-straight people...based on what, exactly? "Principles" like states' rights?
Principles that lead people to suffer unnecessarily aren't worth anything.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:02:04 PM by Draghinazzo
Republicans always want to cite their civil rights record between the 1860s and the 1960s as evidence that they're the better party for minorities to support. Which is of course a crock, because if you haven't done anything for them in forty or fifty years than why on Earth should they care? It's a little like declaring that some jerk you know was a nice guy before he got hooked on meth. It might be true, but he's hooked on meth now and I'm not real interested in getting to know him.
Jim Crow and Segregation were overturned by the North and the Pacific Coast, not Democrat versus Republican, but whereas the Democrats chose to make racial and gender rights pillars of their platform, the Republicans cynically decided to become the party of dogwhistle racism and segregationist nostalgia.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Like, for the next four years or so no one can use that street? A major street with more than just Trump Tower on it? All because Trump feels uncomfortable in any bed but his own and wants to engage in this stupid action of flying back and forth half the week?
Lord save us all, if this really happens New York is going to become a freaking hotbed.
I'd also like to point out that saying "The Democrats yadda yadda yadda" is kind of meaningless when you're actively ignoring historical change. The parties really are different. They've both switched positions, and in the Republican's case, got taken over by a reactionary section of their party.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:10:50 PM by AceofSpades
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They're also, by the looks of things, only getting worse and worse.
Disregarding the can of worms that is Trump himself, consider who he has in his Cabinet and who's he putting into power. Avowed white nationalists. Anti-semites. Staunch homophobes. These are all facts, none of these people are using dogwhistles or anything. These are the people representing the Republican establishment now.
Republicans trying to pretend that they somehow have a moral high ground when it comes to supporting minority rights sounds more and more like a desperate attempt to avoid confronting the Awful Truth of what their party has become.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:11:50 PM by Draghinazzo
I'm not going to hope he dies in office, that's awful to wish on anyone. But I'm sincerely going to hope that he does badly in a way that makes him highly unpopular, and also that he gets so tired out by this that he doesn't feel like running for president again in four years. No idea what sort of awful the conservatives will find then, but chances are that anyone will look shiny and golden after four years of suffering Trump.
Does the White House even have the power to do that? And can't the local businesses pressure them against it? Because there are a lot of super wealthy companies set up there that aren't exactly going to just up and move out to deal with it.
Also Fox it would be really great if you would just link
things instead of dropping them without source or context. Basically it's not going to be permanent but it's going to be a massive pain in the ass. We have a term for that in Cantonese, "mah fan" - so inefficient and annoying it's a waste of time to even bother.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:25:00 PM by AlleyOop
"I'd also like to point out that saying "The Democrats yadda yadda yadda" is kind of meaningless when you're actively ignoring historical change. The parties really are different. They've both switched positions, and in the Republican's case, got taken over by a reactionary section of their party."
It's actually more complex than that. In the 1850s, the Republicans were unquestionably progressive for their time, being a Single-Issue Wonk party around abolitionism. The thing is that after Grant, Gilded Age industrialists became the movers and shakers of the party, and began reshaping the party's legislative priorities. I mean, slavery was gone and Reconstruction was a tragic failure, so you have this huge, dominant party in need of direction. Add into that the early 20th century GOP's imperialistic fervor, and you could make an argument that the oldest extant faction in the GOP is, ironically, its neoconservative branch, since the combination of unrestrained corporatism and unilaterally aggressive foreign policy was a hallmark of both eras of the GOP's dominant political thought. The 20th Century GOP had a brief moment of populist progressivism under Teddy Roosevelt, but the Red Scares, World War II, and the Civil Rights era killed it slowly.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:20:03 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Well, the city already didn't vote for him, not so sure that they can do much else. If it does (and it's not confirmed yet, let's be clear and also hope that someone points out what a bad idea this is.) then there's gonna be a lot of protesting around 5th Avenue.
It'll be like Crawford Ranch: The New York Adventure!
I was more referring to the recent Tea Party stuff.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:20:03 PM by AceofSpades
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I don't think businesses will let that go down without a fight, no. And I don't usually say this, but they have every right to fight and lobby for that. They shouldn't have to be inconvenienced and lose millions of dollars' worth of revenue because the President's a spoiled brat. If Trump couldn't deal with living in DC he shouldn't have run for President.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:23:12 PM by Draghinazzo
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The Tea Party are really more like very, very fundamentalist Libertarians, but with an eye towards internal party politics that made them exceptionally more dangerous. They're not all reactionaries, the same way Trump is, but they're still very destructive.
I can take some satisfaction at how miserable Trump will be now that his person is public property and there are legal restrictions on his freedom of movement and residence.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:22:57 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I believe the Jim Crow laws would have eventually been overturned because they were wrong.
The rationale behind them was indefensible, and eventually this became clear to nearly everyone. I believe the federal action largely followed the realization of that truth rather than the other way around, despite the posturing of those "in charge" in the South. Federal action accelerated things by perhaps 10 years at the most. If the population at large in the South hadn't felt ultimately that segregation was wrong then no amount of federal action would have succeeded in permanently imposing desegregation on them, or in the widespread acceptance it has today.
I guess you could say I have faith that for the most part people eventually do choose to do the right thing. Maybe it's just the cockeyed optimist in me.
Maybe they will, but what people are trying to tell you is would you still be saying that if it was your rights that you would have to wait for?
We can't take a chance on the idea that people will accept it of their own accord someday. Even if you were right, it's still morally reprehensible to make people being denied their rights wait for 10 years until everyone finally decides they can have them.
edited 15th Nov '16 1:35:46 PM by Draghinazzo

"In that case, we might as well have just had a king. As they say, give the people what they want."
America doesn't have an ounce of real monarchism in its political culture — the presidency is as far as we can realistically go before it starts looking like pure Narm. I mean, can you imagine a king striding down a great hall, crown on his head, ermine cape flowing behind him, coronation robes positively bedecked with ornamentation, a scepter in one hand, an orb in the other...and then when he speaks, he sounds like a bookie from Staten Island? For better or for worse, America just doesn't that upper-upper-crust grandeur.
edited 15th Nov '16 12:47:06 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."