This is the best summary I could come up with:
Under a large tent at the Crook county fairgrounds in Prineville, Oregon, six people stand in a neat line, each clutching the gun in their holster.
The presidency of Donald Trump and the Covid pandemic have heightened divisions – with different groups starkly diverging on how they think the state should move forward.
Moving the state lines is a tall order, given that both Oregon and Idaho legislatures would have to agree, along with the respective governors, and then for Congress to approve the matter.
He and his wife lived in Portland, Oregon’s largest city, for 20 years before moving east because on “almost every issue”, abortion, LGBTQ+, guns, drugs, McCaw was opposed to the progressive measures enacted by state legislators.
Outside the courthouse one Sunday, I chatted with Priscilla Smith, chair of the county’s Democrats, who was leading a small rally against the Greater Idaho movement.
Mike McCarter, the president of the Greater Idaho movement, was leading a prayer at the start of a question-and-answer session hosted by McCaw at the Crook county library in Prineville.
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“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”
"We don’t like that the majority that we don’t agree with rules. We want a christofascist theocratic dictatorship where the minority we agree with rules.
They don’t like democracy because they don’t win.
That’s the thing I’ve never understood about the “tyranny of the majority” folks, they’re just arguing that we should do what fewer people think is the right thing to do and that seems objectively worse. If a majority of people disagree with you then you either work to change their minds or be introspective and see if you need to change yours. Sometimes you’ll have to suck it up and deal with the fact that neither of those options will work but that’s just the way it is. There is no alternative that works in the long term.
The problem is the supremacy of the individual ideology. They don’t see themselves as members of a society who have to compromise to get along.
I believe in the rights of the individual, which is why I support free health care, education, and housing for all, so that every individual has a chance to succeed, no matter where they come from.
“No, not like that.”
There is such a thing as a tyranny of the majority but it’s just why we need ironclad rights
“Tyranny of the majority” was an ur-fascist Republican mantra even when I was a kid. These people were always anti-democratic.
Yes. I love the, “The US isn’t a democracy, it’s a Republic!” crowd. A Republic is a form of representatives democracy. The majority elects representatives who then vote on behalf of their constituents. They speak with such confidence but are completely wrong.
EDIT: The definition of a republic is, “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.” Ancient republics may have been different but we don’t live in the ancient world. Not every country that calls itself a Republic is a Republic. The DPRK and Republic of Iran, for example, are a dictatorship and a theocratic autocracy. They are not republics.
The People are the citizens of the state not the white people, or the Christian people, or the Republican people, or the people you agree with. The People are all of the people. It is only a Republic if every single citizen has the right to vote and equal access to the ballot box. If you are trying to disenfranchise people who don’t vote the way you want them to you’re not a Republican, you’re a RINO.
The People may only exercise supreme power if they freely and fairly elect their representatives. If you’re trying to limit the number of polling stations in areas where people don’t vote the way you want them to, or to stop counting of ballots before every ballot is counted, or to make it difficult to vote by mail, or early, or on Sunday you are not a Republican, you’re a RINO.
In a Republic, every citizen has the right to vote, their votes all carry the same weight, and they have equal access to the ballot box. If you don’t have those things not only are you not a democracy but you’re not a republic either.
Just a technicality: Not all republics are democracies. A republic could be an oligarchy or a theocracy. The main division is between monarchy and republic.
They are also gonna hate when they move to Idaho and find it is one of the least pot friendly states in the country with dog shit schools.
Idaho?
Prediction: Literally everything they are complaining about, will be an instance where they’re unhappy about the will of the majority of Oregonians
Brb
Edit: Yeah pretty much
Crook county voted for Donald Trump, a Republican governor, against decriminalising drugs and against restrictions on gun ownership. The state went the other way every time.
Fuckin’ democracy
They want to get rid of agriculture
you need to drive an electric car
Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my government would say, ‘You can’t go to church.’”
IDK, man. I do kind of get it; I think the underlying complaint is probably more just that no one likes feeling like everyone in their community looks at it one way, and there’s a force from outside preventing them from doing it that way when they mostly want to (like drug legalization, or having to wear masks or closing churches during Covid). That part honestly does make some sense to me.
I’d be curious how much is some real agriculture or legislative issue where they actually were being overridden, and how much is culture-war bullshit that doesn’t impact their daily lives in any way except when they see it on the propaganda-news that’s trying to get them all riled up. But I had more sympathy reading about it than I thought I would.
LET THEM JOIN IDAHO!!!
CASCADIA NOW!!!
Honestly, yah.
See how much they want it when they have to start paying tariffs to ship their potatoes into the US.
The United States has he right to travel. There is nothing stopping them from moving to Idaho.
Yeah, but, y’see, actual Idaho kinda sucks. They want the benefits of being in a blue state while complaining about it.
We don’t have a democracy, we are a constitutional republic
This is the new battle cry of American fascism.
The opening of the American Declaration of Independence literally states that the country is going to establish a government that derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The opening of the American Declaration of Independence literally states that the country is going to establish a government that derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
To play devil’s advocate, you could argue that’s why the Eastern Oregonian fascists should be allowed to join Idaho- because they don’t consent to be governed by the state legislature.
(Of course, the real problem is that these assholes are increasingly rejecting the concept of government altogether.)
I don’t understand this argument. The Declaration of Independence is not part of the constitution so it’s not part of a valid legal argument. as I understand it the Constitution does not give individual citizens the right to elect the State that governs them ( beyond by moving obviously).
You’re right, which is why the argument made is a moral one, not a legal one. If you want a more clear-cut example, think about the American South during the US Civil War. They no longer consented to being governed by Washington, so an argument could be made that the North was morally wrong to force the South to remain in the Union. However, as established in Texas v. White in 1869 there was no (and still isn’t) a legal mechanism for a state to leave the Union, therefore the South couldn’t legally secede.
The same legal precedent applies in this case as well. There isn’t any way (currently, anyhow) for states to redraw their boundaries, so even if allowing the eastern Oregon fascists to join Idaho is the morally-correct action (which is not a position I endorse, just presenting the reasoning) they don’t have a legal method of doing so.
I asked him what he meant by that distinction.
“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”
Agreed, so we let homosexual couples get married, pregnant women make their own health care decisions, treat transgendered people with respect, and take measures to prevent at-risk individuals from getting a deadly virus.
