This is a half-truth that obscures what makes The United States unique. From the day the constitution was signed, it was a compromise between competing economies, geographic incentives, cultures, religious movements, political philosophies, and individual ambitions. This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.

Looks like the current US government is trying to centralize the power by multiple means, one of them sending federal officers and troops into states.

To me it's crazy how many went from "we favor the Republic" to "all power to a singular person, what could go wrong, he is cool" pretty fast.

But a huge constraint on the current regime's aspirations is that they can only exercise power by sending federal officers and troops into states. We'd be in a much worse place if Stephen Miller could issue an order taking over local law enforcement every time someone harasses his goons.

Yes, but this tension has been there since the founding of the republic. The federalists wanted to centralize power (some much more than others), and the republicans (the "jeffersonians") bitterly opposed it. In his second term George Washington personally lead troops to Pennsylvania to put down the whiskey rebellion.

Zooming out of the 24h news cycle, "all power to a singular person" concerns seem far too overblown. Half the country hates Trump. He won the popular vote, but not by all that much (despite what he may assert). By comparison LBJ, FDR, and Nixon won ~60% of popular vote. Even if he were a young man, I don't think we're in any danger of a caesar.

Why would a small difference in voters supporting him or not matter if he has all the guns and fanatics willing to use them?

The number of Americans willing to check the other person on the ballot is a lot lower than the number of Americans willing to pick up arms when he ignores the law like all the other laws he ignores.

To be clear, a plurality of individual voters voted for Trump and Vance's electors. Trump still had less than 50% of all votes cast. At 64.1% turnout, that means that less than 32% (approximately) of eligible voters voted for Trump.

From my reading of history the level of polarization was at least as high or higher during the early republic, and obviously higher leading up to and through the civil war. I don't know American history in any meaningful depth outside these two periods, but I suspect there were other periods of extreme polarization. I really don't think this is new.

Comparing the early republic to today is apples and oranges, disagreements and passions are supposed to go down as things settle down with time.

Instead, both parties display an obstinate lack of compromise and wishy-washy, unworkable platforms while the media is only happy to make all of it worse.

Increasing polarization is surely a symptom of problems and that needs to be analyzed, explained and addressed, not excused.

You make it sound like a civil war is a walk in the park, you do need more history and more imagination in order to understand the human cost of obstinance and shallow thinking.

> This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.

Tell that to the Republicans in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.

And the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

The surface level reading of history is that everyone always agreed centralization of power is bad and operated in a gentlemanly way to further this principle, until Trump came along. But that's not the case at all. In the two parts of American history where I read more or less deeply (early republic and civil war), the factions bitterly vied for absolute power but were prevented from getting it through intangible American magic.

I didn’t say that. There’s been a few. Wilson, FDR, Jackson come to mind.

Trump is unique in that the previous folks predated the massive standing army and propaganda capabilities that exist today. The intangible magic is brave individuals and institutions. It’s harder for those individuals with the secret police and army running around.

That America works and keeps working for reasons nobody understands. We seem to make a ton of mistakes, and often act in the same way as far less successful countries do, but somehow keep coming out on top. It often feels like our success is despite our actions, not because of them. That's what I mean by "intangible American magic".

That’s almost the textbook definition of American exceptionalism.

Much of that was always in dispute and while the “freedom of states” stuff has intellectual appeal and often prevails over shorter periods, the trendline has always been towards one nation.

In the post constitution era, 17 amendments were passed by the house, including an amendment that would make states supreme by law. 6 years after the constitution was ratified, Marbury v. Madison established judicial supremacy for interpreting law, 11 years after that, the court ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland that states are subordinate to federal power.

Political compromise got it done, but centralized power is necessary for survival and prosperity. Congress and the courts realized this immediately. Most of the realpolitik of “states rights” is really about wielding tyrannical power locally.

> Most of the realpolitik of “states rights” is really about wielding tyrannical power locally.

I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.

Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it. Marijuana is still illegal and those undocumented immigrants are also illegal, more federal influence would make it so states cannot legalize those any more, is that what you want?

So states rights goes both ways, it lets states both be more progressive and more conservative than the average.

Many states have made it such that there is no functional distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Identical drivers licenses, access to the same services, and indeed protection from federal enforcement of immigration law.

Not helping arrest them != protecting them.

All of those things you’re mentioning are state services that they can offer to anyone because it’s not a federal issue.

This is what states rights look like and why the right is mocked for referencing it when they foam at the mouth once it’s used for things they don’t like.

It’s similar to people who claim the civil war was over states rights when southern states were pushing to have other state sovereignty ignored over their own laws when it came to returning slaves.

States cannot send their police officers to enforce immigration law, correct (see Arizona v. United States), but many states have gone further to make it illegal for their police forces to honor immigration detainers that federal agencies request when an illegal immigrant is arrested for a crime. That sure looks and sounds like a protection to me.

These people are released, which does make the job of federal agencies more difficult, requiring immigration enforcement action in the streets as opposed to the jailhouse. You prefer it in the street, apparently, but I can certainly understand how others may see how these types of actions start to look like States actively frustrating legal immigration enforcement action. Or that it is de facto circumvention if not de jure.

Sure sure, the street raids shall continue for as long as it makes people feel better to point out some sort of implied hypocrisy by conservatives.

No, the street raids will continue while this admin continues their authoritarian streak.

Whether or not the states help them be authoritarian is orthogonal to the chaos in the streets.

If you just want blue states to bend the knee and capitulate, you should say so.

Look, I’m not the one who supports street raids, that’s you. I’m not understanding your point anymore. Do you not want immigration law enforced at all?

An illegal immigrant commits a crime, say vehicular homicide. ICE lodges a detainer against this person, and the local PD refuses and instead releases the offender. As a result, ICE runs a tactical team out to go pick him up.

This is the outcome that you appear to believe is optimal, and you are intentionally using emotionally loaded words like "lenient" to attempt to guilt me into retreating from my position that this is, in fact, not an optimal outcome. In many cases like this additional crimes are committed before the offender is apprehended, crimes which are of course 100% preventable, without you and your "leniency".

>Tell me you at least recognize the difference between actively doing something against some group, and merely not helping them?

Technically speaking, you are right. These states are actively working against their own citizens, not the Federal government.

Your initial claim was that some States are merely "not assisting" the Federal government with their immigration duties, which is actually not a choice they get to make since the controlling caselaw (again, Arizona v. United States) prevents them from doing this even if they wanted to. Local cops cannot investigate immigration status, full stop. I point it out that some states actually go further, and passed laws that bar their police from doing the following.

Feds: hey you arrested individual_x, he's in the country illegally and oh by the way has a few other outstanding warrants, can you please hold him at the jail house, we're going to pick him up for immigration proceedings.

Cops: sure thing, let us know when you get here

And now we get.

Feds: hey hold that guy you arrested, he's got a standing deportation order from years ago, hold him until we get there.

Cops: No, in fact, we're going to let him go.

You continued to imply that banning the former is somehow preferable, even though the latter results in ... street raids.

I'm not really seeing how I'm the bad guy here, and honestly I think your real policy preference is simply that no immigration law is enforced at all. You should have the courage to say so, since that is quite clearly the policy preference for a large portion of the electorate, and possibly a majority of the Democratic Party.

The states have nothing to do with your ignorant hysteria about foreigners. Unfortunately, the reactionary types have turned that into a dog whistle for their imposition on tyranny to deliver freedom, someday, maybe.

Marijuana is illegal. The states have largely chosen to change their laws on the subject as it was determined that it was creating more problems than it was solving. Additionally, the Federal government, while incapable of changing the law, loosened some of the disincentives for the states laws on the subject.

I see conservatives actively oppressing blue states right now. Somehow states rights do not protect civilians from being mistreated, kidnapped and shot by violent agents sent by conservative minority.

> This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.

Well, and the isolation of the country by oceans on both east and west, and by the glaciers to the North, which make invasion by any but Mexico or Canada unthinkably expensive.

As for prosperous, a vast, then-untapped swath of forests, thick humus deposited by glaciers, and mineral deposits, all serviceable by waterways unprotected by competing nations, did play a minor role.

American exceptionalism is always a falsehood.

Took a while, but it seems it only needed 250 years for it to happen. Including a complete revamp of the original draft and a civil war.

Still, 250 years is pretty short on the grand history of humanity.

Maybe you're thinking of the 1st constitution, which was replaced because it made centralized power too difficult?

> The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system

A lot of the constitutional factors you object to - like smaller states having voting power out of proportion to their population, or the constitution being difficult to amend - are also shared by Australia, yet Australia never had race-based chattel slavery.

(Dispossession and maltreatment of indigenous people isn’t really comparable because (a) the US had that too and (b) to the extent that influenced the constitutional architecture, it didn’t really influence the aspects you are complaining about.)

> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.

It keeps coming up because in 2026 the compromises made to accommodate slave-owning states reverberate to this day.

The Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 (at the Constitutional Convention) allowed slave-owning states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. This gave the slave-owning states more representation in the House and more Electoral College votes in presidential elections.

This allowed the south to create a voting block that blocked legislation that would have given the formerly enslaved rights that other Americans had.

The Civil War ended in 1865; black Americans in the south were second class citizens and lived under an Apartheid state for the next 100 years until the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.

> We killed millions over the ability to own humans

"we" didn't kill millions; it's estimated that 750,000 soldiers were killed [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#Casualties

> The Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 (at the Constitutional Convention) allowed slave-owning states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. This gave the slave-owning states more representation in the House and more Electoral College votes in presidential elections.

This is only true if you omit a frame of reference. The slave states wanted slaves to count 1:1 when assigning representatives. The free states wanted them to not count at all. From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation. So yes, from one point of view the 3/5 compromise gave some states more voice than they should have had. From another point it gave them less. That's what makes it a compromise.

> From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation.

This is not accurate, and there was a baseline: one man equals one vote.

It was a compromise because the northern states didn't want to count slaves at all because they're not allowed to vote; they were just property.

Of course, the South wanted to count slaves (for census purposes) as a person, even though they couldn't vote.

By allowing slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person, it enabled the South to have more representation in the House, since the number of representatives is based on the population of the state.

If they weren't allowed to count their slaves, they would have had fewer representatives in the House and wouldn't be able to control legislation, etc.

They wouldn't have done it if it resulted in less representation in Congress.

> We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so.

No, we didn’t, because if that was the reason for the fight, it would have happened before the South, fearing the long-term prospects for the institution of slavery, not only seceded to protect it, but also preemptively attacked federal installations.

The US Civil War was way too long and bloody to claim it was just a war fought over a few federal installations.

It was fought by the South over slavery and by the North over federal power. Both sides were fairly explicit about this at the time.

Of course, long after the fact, popular opinion on slavery has moved enough that people like to pretend the side that they prefer fought primarily for the opposite reason; the South over (opposition to) federal power and the North over (opposition to) slavery.

The above might seem a little shocking to non Americans, but consider the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation proclamation.

The first was because fighting merely for the preservation of the union was not enough to bolster moral. Union forces had been losing or winning pyrrhic victories and the common solider didn’t want to fight to force their southern cousins into a nation they didn’t want to be a part of.

So the stated rationale for the war was changed to be about ending slavey now.

However the emancipation proclamation only ended the practice in states that were in rebellion, which is not what you would expect from a country who had wanted to end slavery from the start.

Lincoln refused to negotiate with them, so not sure what you mean. He only accepted unconditional surrender by them. The southern states tried to negotiate with Lincoln before the war broke out but he refused and never budged on that.

I'm not sure where you've gotten this information, because it's completely untrue. For example, he made a quite famous offer to the southern states on September 22, 1862, in response to a major Union victory at Antietam. If any of them agreed to rejoin the Union before January 1, they would be welcomed back and allowed to keep their slaves under the pre-war status quo. But no state took him up on the offer, presumably because their leaders found it intolerable to live in a country where slavery might some day be banned.

> I'm not sure where you've gotten this information, because it's completely untrue. For example, he made a quite famous offer to the southern states on September 22, 1862

That offer was not to the confederacy, he refused to negotiate with the confederacy. Its very hostile if workers form a union and the employee gives a sweet deal to each of those workers to leave the union while refusing to talk to the union, its the same thing here refusing to negotiate with their representative is very hostile.

> If any of them agreed to rejoin the Union before January 1, they would be welcomed back and allowed to keep their slaves under the pre-war status quo. But no state took him up on the offer, presumably because their leaders found it intolerable to live in a country where slavery might some day be banned.

No, its because the states had formed a new union and they didn't want to betray that one. Lincoln refused to negotiate with them as a whole, he tried to negotiate with the parts. Its like telling enemy soldiers that they get a sweet deal if they betray their country and join yours instead, that will not get you many because most people refuse to betray their allies.

If Lincoln hadn't refused to negotiate with the confederacy as a whole likely the war would be much less bloody or maybe even fully avoided.

Good for him! The time for negotiation is before the war, not after you've been utterly destroyed. For him to give in to the slave-owning south having won a civil war at such high cost, would have been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

So is this what the South teaches in school? Very interesting. Well, I'll try to respond in kind:

>I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.

Yes, it's been more than 100 years. We know the history better than ever. The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them. He simply picked a side and wanted everyone to go along with it. He picked the North because Texas seceded from the union (again, over slavery) and Lincoln would not allow that to happpen. So that played his hand in choosing to eventually ban slavery.

Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?

>The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.

Do you not know what's happened the past year alone? We can argue over history, but this is happening before our eyes.

> So is this what the South teaches in school?

> Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?

> We know history better than ever before.

Do we?

Trying to find why you isolated Texas. Perhaps due to Texas v. White case after the war? It was prominent South Carolinian politicians, led by the Rhett and Memminger schools, who decided their state was to secede (first) from the Union and disseminated delegates with their proposal for secession, The South Carolina program, to the other slave states for adoption. Texas would be the last of the deep South to secede on the first of February 1861, despite the determination of Governor Sam Houston.

As Texan/Georgian I have the highest doubt that any non specializing university degree is teaching the above. Perhaps I am missing context.

> So is this what the South teaches in school?

no. i went to public school in mississippi (both high school and undergrad) and learned the real reason behind the civil war. there are definitely some teachers and textbooks who emphasize the states rights narrative, but that doesn't represent education for the entire south becausee it's not a monolithic region.

> The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them.

lincoln wasn't interested in freeing slaves at the beginning of the war, but he decided to make it an issue once he realized how it could help win the war. (this is very simplified summary btw. dubois has a good argument about this in his book "black reconstruction in america")

> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.

read "forever free" by eric foner if you are interested in a better understanding. the institution of slavery and the institutions created in its place influenced a lot of our current system.

> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.

"These takes" are from the articles of secessions that the various states published on why they wanted to leave. Georgia:

> The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property […]

Mississippi:

> In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. […]

South Carolina:

> The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Texas:

> […] Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. […]

Virginia:

> The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.

Well, that's like your opinion, man.

And cold, hard, indisputable, historical facts of record.