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[GlyphGryph]

There can't be any of those troops in Afghanistan unless the majority approved, so... I fail to see how that supports your point?

[Mr. Palau]

There can't be any of those troops in Afghanistan unless the majority approved, so... I fail to see how that supports your point?

It was an example of things NY couldn't do unilaterally.

[GlyphGryph]

MrP, then it doesn't make any sense in context.

I'm not sure why the tyranny of a minority is meant to be better than a tyranny of the majority.  Unless you think that people in large states are inherently inferior you're just changing who gets to screw over who (and making it so that more people are screwed over).

I'm not really sure how "we don't want to help you to do this" is either tyranny, or somehow worse than "you have to do this". You're the only one arguing for tyranny of any group over another here - and for the "greater good" at that.

[PTTG??]

There can't be any of those troops in Afghanistan unless the majority approved, so... I fail to see how that supports your point?

Well then, I guess California can just go and vote to bring back all our troops from Iraq and Afganistan. Sorry about that, Iowa. Hope things work out for you and Texas over there.

Oh, and the predator drones are ours too, by the way.

[GlyphGryph]

I have no idea what you're even trying to argue there. Are you saying we SHOULD support the rights of minority groups by letting them independently withdraw from wars?

Because I would be 100% behind giving states that right, at least as far as their own forces go... but isn't that already the case? Can't they already back their own troops? (I'm honestly not sure, they should be able to)

Obviously they can't withdraw the ones that are working for the feds, though. Because those aren't, you know, California's property, don't live in California, and aren't working for California.

[Sowelu]

Also please do remember that a majority vote in house and senate is required to CHANGE things.  Things are the way they are right now because of a majority vote on both sides at some point in the past.  Changing the status quo is dangerous and a slow process.  Some states are more grounded in that status quo than others.  They get to say "Um hold up there."

Anyway we may just need to agree to disagree here, since this is pretty fundamental political opinion.

GlyphGryph, there's not really much in the way of state forces, no.  They all answer to the Commander in Chief.

[PTTG??]

@GlyphGlyph
No, it isn't the case, for the obvious reason that instead of having one corrupt department of defense, you'd have fifty corrupt departments of defense, none of which would be effective fighting units, except when they were fighting each other.

Plus either Iowa has it's own naval department, or else it is parasitic on the naval defense of the coastal states.

Good lord man, did you actually think that individual states could withdraw from the military? Can you imagine what would have happened every time there was a minor military setback?

There are good reasons-rare, but important good reasons- why we ceed power to greater authority. However, our current system of controlling that greater authority is unbalanced in favor of small, rural groups due to a compromise dating back to when the greatest conflict was whether or not forcing an entire ethnic group to work to death on plantations was bad.

[Leafsnail]

MrP, then it doesn't make any sense in context.

I'm not sure why the tyranny of a minority is meant to be better than a tyranny of the majority.  Unless you think that people in large states are inherently inferior you're just changing who gets to screw over who (and making it so that more people are screwed over).

I'm not really sure how "we don't want to help you to do this" is either tyranny, or somehow worse than "you have to do this". You're the only one arguing for tyranny of any group over another here - and for the "greater good" at that.

It makes sense.  You were saying that any state can perform whatever policies it likes within its own borders, and I was giving counterexamples.  In this case the smaller, overrepresented people could prevent the majority of people from withdrawing from a war.  Why should a person living in Iowa have more say over what the federal troops do than a person in California?  Why should they have more say on America's treaties on global warming?  Why should they have more say on any issue that you think the federal government should perform?

Your argument is more in favour of weakening federal government rather than in favour of massively overrepresenting some people.  Maybe there's an argument for your position.  But giving smaller states a larger vote than they deserve does not help this goal.  They can stop the federal government from removing overreaches of power just as easily as they can stop them from adding them, afterall (so they might, say, stop public healthcare which you might like, but they could equally prevent the patriot act from being repealed which you would not).

[GlyphGryph]

No, but you seemed to.

I simply meant that if a state has its own forces - personal militias, whatnot, should the states have any - should be withdrawable. I don't know if or to what extent those exist, however, so I'll just go with Sowelu and assume they don't.

But, as I stated quite clearly, I don't believe they should have any control over the federal army. You were the one who seemed to be advocating that, although, lets be honest, I've had no clue what you've been trying to say for your last several posts. Perhaps the misunderstanding is mutual.

But, like, where the heck did you get 50 corrupt departments of defense? I literally have absolutely no clue where you're coming from.

[PTTG??]

You're the one who said that you thought that individual states could withdraw from foreign wars! If they did have independent militaries deployed overseas, each capable of acting independently, they would need an independent infrastructure to support them. Which they don't have and I'm not advocating.

The point is, states can't do a lot of things, because they are restricted by the actions of other states. If you can't understand that, then there's little point in further discussion here.

[Sowelu]

Earlier than that.  Economic reasons were pretty big.  Some small states based their entire economy on X, and if you legislated something related to X, they could get screwed big-time.  And economy != slavery most of the time, guys.  (People who treat the entire history of American civil discourse as though it was ONE SINGLE ISSUE for over two hundred years kind of piss me off.)

Also, religion...some states are dominated by one religion, and religious freedom is important.  If they have a way of life that says Y is important, then the other states shouldn't be able to take away or change Y.  It gives Utah a voice, for example.  We may not agree with their voice, and we may outvote them, but their state still gets an equal voice to stand up and say "guys? can you not put contraception in that national health care system?".  They get this voice because we treasure differences between lifestyles in this country, as much as we might not agree with them.  In the Senate, it's not their people that have a voice, but the state itself, its history and its culture.

Iowa "deserves" exactly the same vote in the Senate that California does.

They both have suffrage, period.  STATES have suffrage just like PEOPLE have suffrage.  You keep bringing individual people into the equation when headcount is not what the Senate is about!

[Capntastic]

My eyes might have glazed over but I don't see how any of this ties back to the idea that in a representational democracy, smaller states with lower populations deserve a proportionally larger share of representation.

[mainiac]

Also, religion...some states are dominated by one religion, and religious freedom is important.  If they have a way of life that says Y is important, then the other states shouldn't be able to take away or change Y.  It gives Utah a voice, for example.

Yes because the Senate does a bang up job of preventing discrimination.  It's not like they've been consistently dragging their heels on womens and gays rights for three decades.  Oh wait...  And remember when the Senate did such a great jobs preventing Arizona from profiling against Latinos?  Me neither.  And of course we know that people would never pass laws targeting the Muslim religion in America.  Except of course that laws for that exact damn purpose were on the books until they got struck down, not by the Senate but by the courts.  And this isn't even getting into the fact that the courts still have to review every attempt by deep southern states to change congressional districts before they go into effect because every few years some southern state comes up with a new plan to disenfranchise the blacks through gerrymandering.

The notion that arbitrary state lines, not population, should determine representation does about as good a job of preventing discrimination as the internet does at preventing ignorance.  The reason that nobody discriminates against the Utah Mormons is that they are conservatives and liberals don't pass laws disenfranchising their political opponents.  Utah's mighty 2% share of the Senate isn't what protects them from the discrimination that goes on every day against blacks and latinos and muslims.

[Leafsnail]

They both have suffrage, period.

Your logic has defeated me.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Discrimination, religious or otherwise, is not in the category of things that should even be up for legislative debate in the first place. That's why the First Amendment covers religion and can be used to strike down any and all laws that discriminate against a religion. (And in an equally important manner, to strike down laws that put religion in government.)

This kind of unchallengeable baseline of human rights is what is required to ideally eliminate but realistically limit discrimination and intolerance.