The Real Threat to Freedom Is Coming From the States [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/opinion/freedom-states-rights.html

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https://archive.is/8MRqI

Across the country, we are seeing sharp new limits on the rights and privileges of Americans. And despite a national mythology that ties the threat of tyranny to the machinations of a distant, central government, the actual threat to American freedom is coming from the states.

It is states that have stripped tens of millions of American women of their right to bodily autonomy, with disastrous consequences for their lives and health. It is states that have limited the right to travel freely if it means trying to obtain an abortion. It is states that have begun a crusade against the right to express one’s gender and sexuality, under the pretext of “protecting children.” It is states that are threatening to seize the children of parents who believe their kids need gender-affirming care. And it is states that have begun to renege on the promise of free and fair elections.

That it is states, and specifically state legislatures, that are the vanguard of a repressive turn in American life shouldn’t be a surprise. Americans have a long history with various forms of subnational authoritarianism: state and local tyrannies that sustained themselves through exclusion, violence and the political security provided by the federal structure of the American political system.

In many respects, the history of American political life is the story of the struggle to unravel those subnational units of oppression and establish a universal and inviolable grant of political and civil rights, backed by the force of the national government.

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