The US Government is designed to represent rural populations not urban ones

[Endus]

Why are you quoting Democratic party talking points?

Also, when I satirize you by saying "Our tyranny is expressed for your own good" I mean precisely that you'll claim people associated with my views can't be morally good, so you must intervene with tyranny for our own moral good. It was almost prophetic.

How about we start by defining what those views are?

Because you'll find that this doesn't boil down to vacuous partisan oppositionism, on our part. Hell, I have literally no stake in the American political sphere, myself. What is happening is that we can point to particular and popular views held by Republicans, often outright expressed as platform objectives by Republican representatives, and those views can be pretty easily categorized as objectively unethical in any honest sense.

I'll use "ethical" rather than "moral", because there are some moral codes I find deeply unethical in practice, even if those who hold them would disagree. Like the child-marriage and child-rape practices of FLDS members, to cite an example that should go uncontested. If you'd prefer to agree to a secular humanist model of morality, however, that would work fine too. Religious morality, obviously, has no relevance nor meaning to anyone who does not choose to follow those precepts, and thus doesn't have any business being brought up in these kinds of discussions.

It isn't about judging Republicans as "evil" for being Republicans. It's about pointing to how Republicans goals on issues like abortion rights boil down to "harming and killing innocent women for reasons that are, at best, rooted in religious misogyny, and at worst, are directly and intentionally sadistic." If you're pro-life, that's the valid, objective description of why that view cannot be considered ethical. Because it has no supportive basis in fact nor reason, and contributes directly and widely to harm against innocents.

That view is unethical and harmful, and we judge those that express support for such harms accordingly.

You somehow seem to get this whole approach backwards, and it's baffling.

[Kaleredar]

Why are you quoting Democratic party talking points?

Also, when I satirize you by saying "Our tyranny is expressed for your own good" I mean precisely that you'll claim people associated with my views can't be morally good, so you must intervene with tyranny for our own moral good. It was almost prophetic.

People aren't calling republicans unethical because they're republicans, they're calling them that because the things they support are unethical.

And you speak of "tyranny." If Republicans were content to not, say, get abortions themselves, or not get gay married themselves because of their beliefs nobody would be accusing them of being "unethical." But that's not what they're doing, or advocating for. They're demanding the ability to make it so other people who aren't them can't do these and other things.

"It's tyrannical that you make us allow other people to get abortions or engage in same-sex marriage/relationships. You need to respect our choice to force other people what to do."

That is what you're saying, here.

[Mihalik]

Simply put the rural vs urban divide simply didn't exist the same way it does today because fucking everyone was rural. It just so happened later on the system was biased towards low population states. And the people in those areas know and use that to their advantage.

That's straight up not true.

Several of the framers of the constitution wrote (I'd straight up say ranted) about their fears of the concentration of power in urban areas. While the US wasn't yet urbanized the writing was on the walls, New York, Philadelphia, Boston were industrializing and fast. Towns across New England were growing and fast, tho they weren't yet full fledged cities their economy wasn't agrarian anymore and by the day's standards they were urbanized.

New York City literally single handedly put out like two thirds of the Federal Budget (which was funded mostly from tariffs on trade and industrial activity) well until the Civil War.

Hell, the very creation of D.C was a reflection of this very specific fear. It's why they moved the capital from the northern urban areas as far to the south as they realistically could.

Claiming otherwise is just another historical revisionist drivel a la "Civil War was about States Rights" etc.

[Flarelaine]

Let me point you to Reynolds v. Sims.

... the basic principle of representative government remains, and must remain, unchanged - the weight of a citizen's vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives. Population is, of necessity, the starting point for consideration and the controlling criterion for judgment in legislative apportionment controversies. A citizen, a qualified voter, is no more nor no less so because he lives in the city or on the farm. This is the clear and strong command of our Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. This is an essential part of the concept of a government of laws and not men. This is at the heart of Lincoln's vision of "government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people."

[Mihalik]

Let me point you to Reynolds v. Sims.

Yet in practice, that's obviously untrue. While technically the constitution prohibits things like the whole 3/5 bullshit we've seen in the past, in practice the system, especially the electoral college but this is true across the board from county level up, is heavily weighted in favor of rural voters.

[Themius]

One interesting fact I have learned that is related to this. A thing called "Prison Gerrymandering" where the prison population is counted towards the area but not allowed to vote so districts are drawn with that in mind and will use them to siphon voters from urban areas to give rural areas more voting power.

We have some districts where as much as 80% of their voting population are in prison and unable to vote. Literally taking someones ability to vote away entirely in order to give someone else even more voting power than they deserve.

Sounds exactly like the 3/5ths compromise…

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Sounds exactly like the 3/5ths compromise…

Was coming in here to say exactly this.

[Draco-Onis]

Honestly I don't think you can let lefty urbanites run a country. They don't like business, they don't like their own country, they don't like success... They can't be put in charge until they adopt the right values.

That explains why the red states have the highest GDPs, biggest businesses and billionaires oh wait that's not reality.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Neoconfederate starter kit: "Stopping us from oppressing racial minorities, queer people, and women is the REAL tyranny, actually."

Donchu know that you're not tolerant if you won't tolerate their intolerance?

[Miffinat0r]

I've yet to see in this entire thread where Rural populations are hindered by the state governments or the federal government for that matter.

From everything I've seen it's when a city does something like pass more reform around policing, minimum wage increases, or some LGBTQIA+ protections from the city that the state government comes in and stops them from doing that because they're not from the city at all.

Then meanwhile at the federal level the house being capped hands more power to rural populations, the Senate is entirely a rural ran operation, and the EC because the house is capped and the Senate counts toward the EC is biased toward rural communities.

When do we get to say we're living under the tyranny of radical rural communities?

[PC2]

That explains why the red states have the highest GDPs, biggest businesses and billionaires oh wait that's not reality.

Correlations between red/blue states and having a high/low GDP never explains anything because correlations do not imply causation.

[Endus]

Correlations between red/blue states and having a high/low GDP never explains anything because correlations do not imply causation.

That's wildly incorrect. Where the hell did you pull that from?

Correlations don't prove a causative relationship, but they're a fundamental requirement to establish a causative relationship between two factors (in either direction, or via a third mutual factor).

You'd still need to determine the causative mechanic, but the existence of said correlation absolutely does "imply" the existence of some kind of causative relationship between the two factors, particularly if said correlation maintains itself through different analytical approaches and data sets (which are the things you'd do to ensure there's actually an identifiable correlation and to try and determine the causative relationship, if any).

The first step to identifying a causative relationship is identifying some correlation between factors. Because of that implication.

[Canpinter]

Correlations between red/blue states and having a high/low GDP never explains anything because correlations do not imply causation.

Ya I'm sure economic policy and gdp are totally unrelated.

[Flarelaine]

Yet in practice, that's obviously untrue. While technically the constitution prohibits things like the whole 3/5 bullshit we've seen in the past, in practice the system, especially the electoral college but this is true across the board from county level up, is heavily weighted in favor of rural voters.

Oh, I know. I just wanted to add some legal reasoning for the equality of votes.

[Mihalik]

We could go back to colony-like situation if this is so oppressive to big states. Virginia was a hugely populated state at the beginning, way more concentrated in percentage of (what would become) the United States than California is today.

Ignoring the rest of your overly verbose horseshit drivel (I just don't have the time and patience to deal with you blog post length Gish Gallops).

Using Virginia's population at the time of the formation of the US as any kind of defense of our electoral system is painfully fucking ironic CONSIDERING WHO MADE UP THAT POPULATION AND WHAT WERE THEIR ELECTORAL RIGHTS.

[tehdang]

People aren't calling republicans unethical because they're republicans, they're calling them that because the things they support are unethical.

And you speak of "tyranny." If Republicans were content to not, say, get abortions themselves, or not get gay married themselves because of their beliefs nobody would be accusing them of being "unethical." But that's not what they're doing, or advocating for. They're demanding the ability to make it so other people who aren't them can't do these and other things.

"It's tyrannical that you make us allow other people to get abortions or engage in same-sex marriage/relationships. You need to respect our choice to force other people what to do."

That is what you're saying, here.

It would certainly make discussion much easier if you label and dismiss on those labels. Topics like abortion, or public expenditure, or taxation, or carbon policy aren’t so easy. Or rather, people that think them easy or pull that previous line, “republicans/libertarians don't care about anything morally good,”—they’re exactly the ones I want furthest removed from power. They’re too ignorant to do anything more than join with fellow ideological allies and turn a couple states into their policy utopias. For the rest; respect freedom. Don't talk about other states as what you’re going to “allow” them to do.

Or be more honest and admit you wish to dictate to others what they shall do (abortion law, for instance) instead of making a false choice involving tyranny of the minority. You want to dictate law at the national level, states be damned. You want to say your tyranny is exercised for moral good that is actually disputed. That’s going to be perceived as tyranny, and you better believe it’ll turn dissenters against your party, should it embody that rhetoric.

[Miffinat0r]

Ya I'm sure economic policy and gdp are totally unrelated.

If economic policy dictated this then why are West Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi almost always in the bottom out of all the 50 states?

Markets don't just thrive on economic policy. I've had so many conservatives try and tell me that economic policy from government is what drives markets, and no demand drives markets.

This is the rub--there's not any significant demand to go start business in these states because there's no market there because people don't want to live there. That's why Texas, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia compared to the other conservative states are stand outs because there's a lot of people who want to live in those states because there's a lot of people already in those states.

Say what you will about IL, CA, and NY but the truth is that as long as there's a lot of people there, and people still starting businesses there, a market will exist that will outperform these lower population states. It's just market function, it's why both India and China in this century will most likely have larger economies than the US simply because they have more people to sell things to.

But again this goes back to the initial point of the thread. There multiple instances where cities pass laws only to have the state capital come in and block them. The most famous was when St. Louis passed their minimum wage increase, and the capital, dominated by rural conservatives passed a law that stripped them of that right. Then because MO has a direct democracy ballot initiative they overrode the state capital by passing it at the ballot box.

Point there is what you see was Tyranny of the Minority trying to overrule the majority of people from a localized area. It's rural populations trying to force themselves into the culture and wanting to dominate every aspect of people's lives. There's no recourse to protect urban populations in the US from the tyrannical rural populations. But we're told this is what freedom looks like.

[Kaleredar]

It would certainly make discussion much easier if you label and dismiss on those labels. Topics like abortion, or public expenditure, or taxation, or carbon policy aren’t so easy. Or rather, people that think them easy or pull that previous line, “republicans/libertarians don't care about anything morally good,”—they’re exactly the ones I want furthest removed from power. They’re too ignorant to do anything more than join with fellow ideological allies and turn a couple states into their policy utopias. For the rest; respect freedom. Don't talk about other states as what you’re going to “allow” them to do.

Or be more honest and admit you wish to dictate to others what they shall do (abortion law, for instance) instead of making a false choice involving tyranny of the minority. You want to dictate law at the national level, states be damned. You want to say your tyranny is exercised for moral good that is actually disputed. That’s going to be perceived as tyranny, and you better believe it’ll turn dissenters against your party, should it embody that rhetoric.

Human rights aren’t something that we should allow states to choose to selectively legislate on.

That we should allow states to determine who has what rights was the argument that the slave states were making prior to the civil war. And then again after they got their asses handed to them and they took up segregation as their new “but it’s our states rights issues.” The federal government had to put a stop to their oppression, and it looks like it’s going to require that again.

As far as things like climate policy or pollution or COVID policies that effect basically the whole world, you advocating that each state should be able to determine their own is akin to arguing that “there should be peeing and no peeing sections of a pool, and if you don’t like the people peeing you should just swim to the no peeing section”

[Elegiac]

For the rest; respect freedom. Don't talk about other states as what you’re going to “allow” them to do.

The way you don't even believe in this crap as evidenced by your positions on gun control.

Though I'm not surprised at the level of dishonesty considering the fact that to this day you've never actually explained why states are the 'ideal' level of administration for these sorts of things as opposed to cities or even individuals (i.e. the way it was under Roe).

- - - Updated - - -

Human rights aren’t something that we should allow states to choose to selectively legislate on.

That we should allow states to determine who has what rights was the argument that the slave states were making prior to the civil war. And then again after they got their asses handed to them and they took up segregation as their new “but it’s our states rights issues.” The federal government had to put a stop to their oppression, and it looks like it’s going to require that again.

As far as things like climate policy or pollution or COVID policies that effect basically the whole world, you advocating that each state should be able to determine their own is akin to arguing that “there should be peeing and no peeing sections of a pool, and if you don’t like the people peeing you should just swim to the no peeing section”

Incoming bitching about California's exemptions to federal emissions policy in 3...2...1...

[Ivanstone]

As far as things like climate policy or pollution or COVID policies that effect basically the whole world, you advocating that each state should be able to determine their own is akin to arguing that “there should be peeing and no peeing sections of a pool, and if you don’t like the people peeing you should just swim to the no peeing section”

And the peeing section of the pool eventually takes over the entire pool because water cares not for your shitty little divisions.

Pollution and disease do not care for your state lines. It makes no sense for their to be state's rules on these things.