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The core part of it: the US has much more vocal extremes in all directions, and they want to carve out niches where they can apply their own rules. That's wher

The core part of it: the US has much more vocal extremes in all directions, and they want to carve out niches where they can apply their own rules. That's where you see states that ban abortion and force religious views into education for instance, to take one extreme, and they sure don't want a ruling entity to tell them they can't do so. Same applies to any subject, including identifying people (I'm pretty sure there's a sizeable number of people who don't want any official ID at all, even limited to their town, under no circumstance) Basically, where some countries/federations will strive for unity and common values, the US keeps an idea of letting extremes run around in their own pockets of land and sometimes sit in the country's driver seat.

bigstrat2003 2y ago
> Basically, where some countries/federations will strive for unity and common values, the US keeps an idea of letting extremes run around in their own pockets of land and sometimes sit in the country's driver seat. That's close but not quite right. The idea is that by solving matters as locally as possible, it lets people with strongly held opinions on the government coexist more easily. One person thinks abortion is a fundamental right everyone should have, another thinks it's tantamount to murder and a moral abomination. Neither is budging, so instead of having half the country at each others' throats as they try to force their views on everyone, it can be better to let them solve these issues locally. Then we have a better chance at getting along as a whole, because we can each find a community where our values are upheld and "live and let live". That's the idea, at any rate. There are various flaws we see in practice, and perhaps the idea is untenable in this day and age. But it's fundamentally an attempt to gain unity where otherwise there would only be division. And of course it's also tied to a strong cultural mistrust of government (especially centralized government), as I mentioned in my other post.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  > let them solve these issues locally Florida is 22.6M people. That's not very "local" if you ask me.

bigstrat2003 2y ago

> Basically, where some countries/federations will strive for unity and common values, the US keeps an idea of letting extremes run around in their own pockets of land and sometimes sit in the country's driver seat. That's close but not quite right. The idea is that by solving matters as locally as possible, it lets people with strongly held opinions on the government coexist more easily. One person thinks abortion is a fundamental right everyone should have, another thinks it's tantamount to murder and a moral abomination. Neither is budging, so instead of having half the country at each others' throats as they try to force their views on everyone, it can be better to let them solve these issues locally. Then we have a better chance at getting along as a whole, because we can each find a community where our values are upheld and "live and let live". That's the idea, at any rate. There are various flaws we see in practice, and perhaps the idea is untenable in this day and age. But it's fundamentally an attempt to gain unity where otherwise there would only be division. And of course it's also tied to a strong cultural mistrust of government (especially centralized government), as I mentioned in my other post.

yencabulator 2y ago
> let them solve these issues locally Florida is 22.6M people. That's not very "local" if you ask me.