Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lord Shonus]

State governments are more easily co-opted than the Federal (not that the latter is particularly difficult at this point), and have an easier time passing unnecessary or harmful rules precisely because they deadlock less easily, so I don't see how they help.

State governments are ALSO much easier to push positive change through - both women's suffrage and gay marriage would have taken far longer to become reality if change had required changing national law. Not least among the reasons support suddenly swung sharply up in both cases was that a few states took that first step and the sky didn't fall. Ease of change works both ways, and the biggest reason that state supremacy is so often associated with bad laws is that the good ones spread fairly fast once they're tried, while the bad ones tend to stick in the handful of states where they originated and fester.

[birdy51]

Methinks Lord Shonus raises a valid point. Though state governments don't always achieve great things, they do allow for new ideas to be tested, then eventually verified or rebuffed by the National whole. They are in a sense, a proving ground for new ideas where people can cut their teeth.

At least, in that way I think they do a very effective job.

[Loud Whispers]

Except when you've got massive state security bureaus with the apparatus to make sure that their new bold ideas will receive no opposition...?

[Bauglir]

Oh, sure, and those are reasonable arguments to make. They tend to support having a Federal government, though, since being a testbed implies they're being tested for something (like implementation nationwide at the Federal level).

[Lord Shonus]

Oh, sure, and those are reasonable arguments to make. They tend to support having a Federal government, though, since being a testbed implies they're being tested for something (like implementation nationwide at the Federal level).

I don't think anyone's arguing for getting rid of the Federal system apart from those trying to strip as much power from the states as possible in the name of "better democracy". Both state's rights and Federal control are integral to making this country (and, honestly, any country on this sort of scale) work.

[Wolfhunter107]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/trump-finally-performs-a_b_7826240.html

As a man, he is pond scrum with a penis attached

[birdy51]

Except when you've got massive state security bureaus with the apparatus to make sure that their new bold ideas will receive no opposition...?

Alright. You're going to have to explain this one, as I have no clue what exactly you are referring to in the slightest.

[Bauglir]

I don't think anyone's arguing for getting rid of the Federal system apart from those trying to strip as much power from the states as possible in the name of "better democracy". Both state's rights and Federal control are integral to making this country (and, honestly, any country on this sort of scale) work.

Perhaps nobody's arguing for that particular thing, but what I've said is still applicable against wierd, whose argument has pretty consistently been that Federal control is inherently dangerous and should be allowed only as much power as necessary to keep the nation from falling apart, and should be hobbled as much as possible so that even that power can't be abused, since using it would require an extraordinary national consensus.

In fairness, though, what I ought to have said is "support having a strong Federal government", since the point is that once the tests are done you need a mechanism for putting the results into practice. That's the case if the argument is "State governments are staging grounds for policies that will eventually become national", which is a distinct argument from "State governments are distinct realms so that people can choose the one with the policies they like best". The two are mutually exclusive, since a policy that becomes national eventually denies people that choice, while optimizing policy diversity means that most policies can't become universal.

[Lord Shonus]

In fairness, though, what I ought to have said is "support having a strong Federal government", since the point is that once the tests are done you need a mechanism for putting the results into practice.

Not sure I agree on that - it is necessary in some cases, but the ideas that work out tend to catch on fast, while the ones that aren't so good don't. That's another reason why state's rights gets tarred with the nastier policies - the bad ones don't usually catch on (either that, or they lose their grip much faster in the case it's a very old idea) in enough places that you have governors loudly denouncing attempts to make them institute segregation, bigamy laws, or uphold the "sanctity of marriage" in the same way that you have governors virulently invoking state's rights to preserve such things - getting rid of them worked well enough elsewhere that a movement grew up, while relatively few compared the states that had those things and those that did not and said "we need to get some of that."


EDIT: Not sure that says what I'm trying to say, but I can't think of a better wording.

[Loud Whispers]

Except when you've got massive state security bureaus with the apparatus to make sure that their new bold ideas will receive no opposition...?

Alright. You're going to have to explain this one, as I have no clue what exactly you are referring to in the slightest.

When you do your great big experiments over the state and it fails, you need not change it if you have the means by which to tag, track and stop any dissent.

[Sheb]

Trump Says He Heroically Avoided Capture in Vietnam by Staying in U.S.

[hops]

What.

[Descan]

Borowitz is satire.

[scriver]

Although in this case, nearly not.

[nenjin]

It's moments like that which make me believe Trump is a troll-extraordinaire.