Canada has always had strong provincial governments which control many important functions, including health and many other things - but not usually foreign policy, much law, immigration outside of Quebec, some taxation, the military and various tightly proscribed domains.
Canadians might see the US as broad regions (“Old England”, “The South”, etc) but do not usually think of the states as being arbiters of the rules. Of course states control many things. Since Covid was organized on a state to state basis, any polarization on the political spectrum has become more pronounced. This article suggests state polarization is a huge topic but people more often think in federal terms. But I imagine US Dopers are highly aware of local issues and wonder if this was largely true before Covid. Did Trump aggravate decisions more than Covid? Is it true? Was it ever this? ** I apologize if this may seem obvious to you, but am interested in how it has changed in your view.**
In the US system, the Federal government is largely only intended to deal with external issues and cross-state issues. It was meant to be more like the EU and Canada than like it is today, so saying that the states are splitting off from one another is - in a sense - both expected and good. We’re not intended to have any greater moral overlap than you find in the Bill of Rights. It’s supposed to be that one state might think that fetuses are tiny, fully formed human beings, another thinks that you’re still ripe to be dropped from the genetic pool until you’re 2 years old, and for another to think that cows are sacred animals that should never be harmed - and for all of them to be able to put that into law.
That said, the 1st Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights and things that go against it are unconstitutional and un-American.
But, likewise, the 2nd Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights and things that go against it are unconstitutional and un-American.
And most of America thinks that the Federal government decides most or all of our laws, and most of America thinks that our form of government isn’t a Republic.
I’d probably make the argument that the big issue is that we’ve lost track of what the country is all about, to begin with, and until we can get back on track with that we’re going to continue to have issues. Some people might determine that they’ve simply been born on a chunk of Earth that was bound to a set of ideas that they don’t agree with. Whether the foundational ideas of the country are right or not, I would personally say that most people seem to be fine with the Bill of Rights and the ones who aren’t are better to find another place to go than try and drop some parts of it.
Another POV is that our Founding Fathers wrote a reasonable plan for a country we no longer are. A plan that is now fundamentally at odds with what’s needed for successful cooperation across a continent-sized country of 330 million people, 21st century tech, then-unimaginably large total and per capita GDP, etc.
A bunch of political compromises made in 1776 to get the requisite votes to start this experiment ended up enshrined as items of Og-like wisdom instead of as the sleazy backroom deals they actually were.
We must adapt our 250-years old arrangements to our current reality or suffer the consequences of ever less-appropriate national government.
“Going back” to more like how it was done in 1776 is a recipe for decline, Balkanization, and disaster. Going forward into the 21st Century using the lessons learned over the last 250 years around the world about how to organize large representative democracies is the far, far smarter move.
our problems in the stave vs fed government go back to how the English government originally viewed the colonies
king James basically viewed them as land deals to rid himself of nuisances and raise funds to pay for other things going on and as long as they didn’t foment rebellion he really didn’t care what they did
The same goes for Cromwell and everyone else up to about 1690/the 1700s … What changed the soon-to-be British states mind was the witch hunts and the resultant hysteria and since the national mood was playing down religion at that point in time… there was a sense of " time to rein the religious fanatics " and (it would be a good source of taxes also)the crown asserted itself by voiding what charters were left and saying they were part of the kingdom
but by then the tribalism that would plague the founding fathers had set in supposedly Washington himself said being president was like trying to be king of 13 different independent kingdoms at the same time
What they should have done then also was erase the borders and make it into one big state then divide it into counties for administration
In theory, I would say yes. The states have the ability to dissolve the federal government, in theory. In practice, it’s definitely debatable. In modern life, I think it’s important to have a relatively effective central government with appropriate constraints.
As an amateur student of US history, I would say that we are still in the throes of debating the OPs question, just as the founding fathers did in forming the union.
If one were to jump into a time machine to that era, it would be likely that one would have thought of each colony as an independent entity, like a “country”, but not quite as they were subjects of the British crown. Wise people accepted that some sort of union was needed for some purposes of regulation and commerce, but the overall feeling was that the Federal entity would have a light hand.
Fast forward through time and we have seen movements toward uniformity and the Federal government applying a stronger hand on states independence (no more slavery being the most obvious example). Some believe that states should still have great independence on a whole host of topics, while others feel that we should have more uniformity. Our Supreme Court spends a lot of time deciding these issues, lately leaning in the direction of states autonomy - the abortion issue being a recent notable example.
Count me as one who thinks we are ripe for a rethinking of the structure and relationships between states and the Federal government. At least settling some of the ongoing big topic debates.
Personally, I would advocate more uniformity, and that states were better as “Federal administrative districts”, much like counties are within states currently. But, I would also like a pink pony.
Agreed, they tried a confederacy at first because they were wary of having a central government after their experience under a king, but it just wasn’t feasible and they compromised with what we have today.
The role of the states vs. the role of the federal government has been loudly disputed since day 1 of the Constitution. The founders wanted states to differ from one another but caved to the reality that certain functions had to be uniform and so only a federal government could provide those services, ranging from a military to a post office to a judiciary to tariffs. Yet, the feds normally won disputes over other issues only after decades of strife and even then those were usually partial or in-name-only victories. Slavery leading to Jim Crow is the obvious example.
Slavery was never a rural/urban issue as we define it today. Jim Crow became one. State legislatures were dominated by rural interests until well into the 20th century. First, there were simply more rural residents than urban ones. But until the one man/one vote ruling of 1962, state legislative districts weren’t required to have equal representation. The Baker v Carr case was brought because Tennessee hadn’t redistricted since 1901! Until then rural economic interests were generally pitted against wealthy urbanites, with many early northeastern 20th century legislatures wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporations while midwestern ones were dominated by farmers.
Since then, rural voters have had proportionally less power by numbers. But the rural/urban split today is about beliefs. Almost inevitably in today’s America, urban areas are far more diverse than rural areas, which are predominately white, older, have fewer college graduates, less religious variety, and lower incomes. They overwhelmingly vote Republican, just as high minority inner-city districts vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Theoretically those should balance out, but in practice states tend to district so that there are few high-density democratic areas and many low-density republican areas. Look at the Texas Senate and Texas House as examples.
The balance between urban and rural areas is much more even in federal elections, which is why we’re in an unusual era of narrowly won elections and split Congresses. But 30 states have both houses Republican while only 17 have both Democrats. (Two are split; Nebraska has one officially nonpartisan Legislature dominated by Republicans.) Since most of these states also have Republican governors, they are largely free to badmouth, dispute, or dismiss any Democratic federal policies.
Whether star or federal governments matter more is not an answerable question. The power varies among specific issues, from election to election, whether the governor and/or president is charismatic and powerful, with population shifts, and a whole bunch more. The ebb and flow is constant, the battle is ongoing. Both are designed into the system, with canny politicians making the most of their sides. My guess is that since the 2020 census found the first rural population decline in history the politicians are making the most of their advantage while they have it and we won’t be talking about the rural/urban split in a generation while the state/federal split is forever.
I am some mixture of bemused and horrified that smart legal experts so frequently try to interpret what smart political people nearly two and a half centuries prior would have thought about some esoteric modern topic not remotely relevant to things as they were at that time.
Canadians are far from immune from the truth people often come up with an opinion and then seek to justify it - rather than form an opinion based on all the information (even if they think that is what they did). This seems to be a major reason for originalism, whose Canadian proponents are relatively few in number.