How Republicans Weaponized Local Politics Into A National Culture War

When discussing states' rights in the 1930s, Lewis Brandeis said that states can be "laboratories of democracy". With their individual autonomy, they can learn from each other's successes and failures, and implement policies that are best for everyone. In practice, though Republicans have used state and local government to create a cultural brushfire all across the country.

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In the founding and the debates around how to establish a constitution and move from a set of colonies to a unified country right in you know aftermath of the Revolutionary War. There's this debate you know? So James Madison's proposing let's have a unitary system of government with a really powerful national government right? not so much power to the states. others especially from small states and to some extent slave states are saying no we need a lot of power in the states right? We want we don't want the national government to come in banning slavery and things like that. There's this big debate going on so what they do is this compromise. They compromise between a system that you know so there's some authority for the national government, some for the state governments, and they're not meant to encroach on each other. So that's federalism there. and then going forward you know so in selling federalism for the U.S Constitution Madison and The Federalist Papers and a ton of other authors are writing you know this is going to protect against tyranny. we don't want you to know different religious groups are in different states right? They can customize policies for each other. and then Lewis Brandeis in the 30s in the 1930s fast forward has this other new really positive idea of Laboratories of democracy. of learning from each other across state lines. right if there's a financial crisis like the depression that Brandeis is living through right? If a state is successful, other states can look like in the 2008 financial crisis. The idea is that Minnesota is doing a good job hiring back public sector workers, restarting its economy, and raising tax revenue. Maybe Wisconsin's neighboring state is going to look over and say let's copy those successful things Minnesota did. but what we're finding now is if that were ever true it's definitely not true now.