10th Amendment

[Senyu]

How far do you think the 10th Amendment should go? How freely can states make their laws? How many unified standards can the Federal Goverment make? Where is the balance on the scale of potential chaos and potential dictatorship?

Your opinion?

[Warborn]

Federal law has to exist to ensure that tyrannical democracy doesn't reign freely. There are various measures which, in the past, have demonstrated that politicians at a state level are fundamentally incapable of making decisions which are "right". These range from slavery, to civil rights, to the suffrage of women. All of these were state-wide issues essentially, and all required federal intervention in order to settle.

On the other hand, democracy was birthed within city-state apparatuses and ultimately works better when you get small-scale representation. Plus, it's definitely the case that even today you can see the beginnings of changes within the US stemming from popular opinion expressed at a state level. Medical marijuana is one example, gay rights another. On the other side of the coin, you have opposition to immigration and abortion. So states being able to assert themselves legislatively in areas no enumerated upon in the Constitution also serves as a decent platform for bringing about change within the country to one extent or another, I think.

[Baneblade]

The federal government's role is to enforce and protect the constitution, which each state had to agree to abide by in the first place.

The fed should not be making laws for the entire country that are outside the scope of the constitution.

[CutterJohn]

I mainly see such things as rather.. outdated. The states, the senate.. those are the results of a compromise needed to get 13 separate nations to join forces. Theres not all that much necessary for region specific laws, since people aren't all that much different state to state. Aside from a few strange laws, things were pretty much the same from state to state. Murder is murder, theft is theft, rape is rape. Still have to pay your taxes, same general services provided, if you're in trouble, you call 911.

Sure, you need a regional government to decide stuff that the national government doesn't care about, but for all I care they can just be the next step up from city/county governments, rather than a quasi sovereign state. Life just isn't different enough between them to warrant the distinction anymore.

[Graywolves]

I think the 10th amendment has pretty much faded away in its worth.

If I take a flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco or Seattle, I don't find myself needing to learn new laws typically.

Aside from smoking and cell phone bans, the state level politics is more about wether or not the roads need to be fixed.

[Warborn]

If I take a flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco or Seattle, I don't find myself needing to learn new laws typically.

Take a flight from San Francisco to Topeka and the amount of weed that would have gotten you a $100 fine in California will get you a year of prison in Kansas for your first offense.

States being able to make their laws regarding stuff the Constitution doesn't elaborate on means that public awareness and opinion regarding issues like marijuana can be more readily expressed and shifted. Medical marijuana in other states is the first step on the road to abolishing bullshit like Kansas marijuana laws. As we see recently though, state law changes are also probably going to pave the way for the US to bring back teaching creationism in schools in place of science as the states circumvent federal law against teaching creationism by instead "teaching the controversy about evolution v. intelligent design".