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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3298 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 22, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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A lack of revolution is understandable

Critically, this is a federalism issue with no important underlying policy disagreement. Non-consensually cutting people's hair (except in specific situations like the military draft) is uncontroversially illegal everywhere. In the modern US, nobody cares whether the same policy is implemented by the States or the Feds except in so far as it works as a litigation maneuver. (This isn't true in Europe, where the EU is not a country and the member states are still seen by their electorates as countries, and a substantial minorities of people are deeply attached to the idea that certain types of decision are made at country level)

Since America became a country and the individual States ceased to be countries (which a lot of people date to the Civil War, but I think happened somewhere between the Monroe and Jackson administrations) federalism ceased to be a principle people actually believed in and became a peace treaty. (Compare the infamous Yonatan Zunger essay making the same argument about liberal tolerance.) And right now, politically engaged Americans on both sides unfortunately don't seem to believe in abiding by the long-standing peace treaties between the Red and Blue tribes.

Critically, this is a federalism issue with no important underlying policy disagreement.

No, critically this is an issue of whether words in legal texts mean anything at all, whether George Bush was right about the constitution, and of whether, as erwgv3g34 points out, "rule of law" is even a coherent concept. Whether or not I agree with a given policy, or the manners in which powers are delegated between administrative units is completely irrelevant to whether or not judges are making shit up out of thin air.

Since America became a country and the individual States ceased to be countries (which a lot of people date to the Civil War, but I think happened somewhere between the Monroe and Jackson administrations) federalism ceased to be a principle people actually believed in and became a peace treaty

Then they should have changed the constitution to reflect that. By not doing so, they are either admitting to be in it's blatant violation, or to it not having any meaning to start with.

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