Thank you for insulting me and trivializing my opinions about what a just and representative government can and should be. :rolleyes:
I don’t believe that myself. The most basic point is that the U.S. is one of the largest countries in the world by both population and land area. Federalizing most things simply wouldn’t work. People tend to focus on hot button issues like abortion, gun rights, and gay marriage. That stuff is mainly just fluff meant to keep the populace endlessly jabbering about things that dont have much relevance to the health of the nation (not to say that some of these aren’t very important to some people). Once you start federalizing issues, you will start to run into problems that have day to day importance. How could Congress draw up a comprehensive water rights bill that takes care of both Arizona and Maine equally? You would just end up with a Congressional bill with 100 sub-parts to address the various situations in different areas of the country. What about polution control? California obviously has separate issues than Wyoming.
How would federalizing what even a fraction of what the states do even work? Congress supposedly has a full workload now. How could they take on many times that workload and do it as effectively as each state does? The states all have their own executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Alaska has one congressional representative and two senators. Are those people supposed to represent Alaska as well as the entire current governmental body in Alaska already?
As you try to work around these issues, the answer quickly becomes “why”? India has strong states and even Canada with 1/10th of the U.S. population has strong provinces to some degree for the same reasons.
I’ve always been of the belief that ideas get to be defined by their proponents. The rest of us can decide whether they make any sense or not, or whether they’ll work in various situations, but the proponents get to define what they are, what they mean.
By that metric, Jim Crow was exactly what states’ rights was all about. It may have ultimately been found by the rest of the nation to be inconsistent with the Constitution, thank goodness, but that didn’t change the underlying idea.
Reagan’s campaign strategist explains how “states’ rights” became used as a code word for bigotry, as to a large degree it still is today (with gun rights tossed in for good measure):
Reagan starting his campaign for President by announcing his support for “states’ rights” in the Jim Crow hotbed of Philadelphia, Mississippi was quite well understood by his audience, you can be sure.
But that may be good for demonizing Republicans or Reagan (may be, another debate) but can’t someone espouse the idea of states rights as a good thing, even though others have perverted the idea and turned it into support for Jim Crow laws?
In other words, maybe Hitler championed the idea of dog ownership to breed a race of superdogs to kill Jews (hypothetical). Does that mean that dog lovers are forever to be compared to Hitler because of this?
Not without being very careful with the wording of it, no, you can’t. The term “states’ Rights” has permanent baggage dating back to, and inextricable from, the Civil War and Southern secession in the cause of slavery. The war, btw, did establish Federal supremacy over the states permanently and incontestably, despite what one hears from the self-styled Federalist Society and their fellow travelers even today. Deal with it, guys.
It isn’t about “demonizing” Republicans at all (their actions in embracing the Southern Strategy speak for themselves, and did you notice it was Reagan’s own campaign strategist I was quoting?), it’s just about historical and linguistic accuracy. That includes context and code meanings, like it or not. Words mean what they’re generally understood to mean, and that includes political code words.
You’re welcome. I did in fact read your post but I disagreed with it. You made some accurate statements about issues involving state vs federal powers and what effect they have on American politics. But what you wrote doesn’t invalidate my point - that there’s probably less than a thousand people in the country who actually care about the issues you described. They may use the issues you described but only to carry out whatever agenda it is that they actually care about.
Look at gay marriage (to use a topical current example that’s already been brought up). Sure there are people arguing that states rights are a valid reason to ban gay marriages in states where it’s unpopular - but then these same people will argue that we need a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages everywhere in the country. And gay marriage proponents will say that states that support gay marriage should be allowed to legalize them because of states rights - and then they argue that other states should have to legalize gay marriages also because of the full faith and credit clause. Both sides will argue loudly and invoke states rights and federal power but what they’re really arguing about is gay marriage.
So when some state ruling or law gets overturned by the Supreme Court, it’s because of the Tooth Fairy?
The Tooth Fairy is why a state can’t institute segregation in schools?
The Tooth Fairy is why a state can’t make abortion illegal?
The Tooth Fairy is why a state can’t make sodomy illegal?
Good thing we have a Tooth Fairy, because that dumb ol’ Constitution is good for nothin’.
I said “most.” “Most” is a relative word, just like “limited.” Of course the Constitution is limited, because, well, the Constitution limits itself. My point was that if you want to have a state where laws are uniform in all provinces, you start with a constitution (c.f., European countries). The fact that the U.S. Constitution is very limited doesn’t change that.
Actually, in the context in which you used it, “most” did not refer to quantity, but instead was used as emphasis. Of course the Constitution is why certain state laws have been overturned. But the point I made, and which you fail to refute, is that the U.S. Constitution, due to its limited scope, is decidedly not a primary cause of uniformity in state laws. Indeed, it can been strongly argued that the primary cause of uniformity in state laws are the Uniform laws drafted and advocated by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which was founded in 1892 and has drafted over 200 of them. The Uniform Laws (and Model laws, which is a catch-all category of proposed laws drafted by other organizations, and have not had quite as much success in obtaining universal adoption) in all probability govern considerably more of day-to-day life than does the Constituion.
Sua
A relatively recent development? It’s been part of the Constitution since 1868. The states were immune from the Bill of Rights for only the first seventy-nine years under the Constitution; they’ve been subject to it for the last one hundred and thirty-nine years.
Not all of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated. Those parts that have been were incorporated over a series of cases. There is no one point at which the whole Bill of Rights was applied to the States.
My own personal researcher!
Thanks, Gfactor. Any chance I can send you some other stuff I need done?
Not to detract from what Gfactor has provided, but I found this Wikipedia article on incorporation’s list to be apparently both accurate and thorough:
I’ll send you my rate sheet. 
Did those those laws came out of thin air?
Here is my big question:
If the Bill of Rights are fundamental rights guaranteed to all,
and the 14th amendment forces states to recognize fundamental rights,
then why are only some incorporated?
Why is the 1st amendment valid to the states, but the 7th amendment (jury trial in matters over $20) has no validity to the states? It makes no sense to me. They were all ratified together.
I know the real reason is because SCOTUS hasn’t said so, but why?
Ok, then change the name, because a federalist system is probably way better than homgenous laws governing a decidely heterogenous nation. You can mostly let the states do as they please so long as you take the 14th Amendment at face value:
Because the Court has said the entire Bill of Rights isn’t fundamental. The Court has struggled for a test:
As Justice White said in Duncan v. Louisiana
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/duncan.html
The Court rejected blanket incorporation in several cases, starting with the Slaughterhouse Cases:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/slaughter.html