Comment by seanmcdirmid
Comment by seanmcdirmid 3 days ago
Local governments do that. I think the US federal government has to follow a different set of more stringent rules.
Comment by seanmcdirmid 3 days ago
Local governments do that. I think the US federal government has to follow a different set of more stringent rules.
They actually have. The Supreme Court had a recent ruling, congress has passed laws to try and restrict it (to the best that federal rules can affect local state ones). The distinction definitely is important, but if you have an ideological bone to pick, it’s better to ignore it.
The US has a very large voting bloc composed of people who want their state and municipality to be free from restrictions imposed by the federal government. In practice, this leads to many places with a significantly larger amount of actually-experienced tyranny than you get in more uniformly governed countries. Ideally, this is coupled with freedom of movement, so that it's easy to get a job and housing in a state or city with more liberal governance.
The federal government has done nothing about these actions by the local governments, so this is a distinction without a difference.