The purpose of a federal republic is to differentiate clear differences between the various regions of a nation, or a country. In a country as large as the United States, the regions that make up the country will be distinct, and thus have different values. A federal republic allows the various regions to live under their own laws that reflect their values. This is in contrast to social democracy, which is a government based on the idea that the majority can dictate what is good for the whole of society for a country. This system is inferior because majorities are not majorities everywhere. People ought to live under laws that reflect their values, rather than laws enforced upon them by those who do not live where they live.
Whenever I look at election results maps, I’m always surprised at the uniformity at how voting occurs. For the most part, urban areas vote for the Democratic Party, and rural areas tend to vote Republican. This is not always true, as California has a lot of rural counties that vote blue, and Alaska had a reverse situation where the least population dense counties voted for Biden, and the more populated counties voted for Trump. However, for the most part this rule holds true for most of America.
It is clear to me that not only contemporaneously, but historically, America has always been afflicted by regional differences. From the very beginning of the country, there was a broad divide between the slave owning, plantation southern states, and free northern states. Not only that, but there were distinct urban societies that were different from the rural societies. I would contend that a similar divide exists today. Even in the town I live in, Corvallis Oregon, the town is fairly urban/suburban, yet rural farmland exists less than mile from the urban downtown area, and wilderness a 15 minute drive in any direction. Corvallis is a very strange mixture of urban college elite and rustic working class farmers. The cultural differences are distinct, to say the least.
And that’s the reality of it: There are different cultures that exist within America. These cultures have different values. The rural people I worked with at my job tended to be labor oriented, traditional, religious, and politically conservative. Whereas at the college, I encountered socially liberal people who were willing to engage in casual sex, drugs, and partying. Even the more upright and uptight people held progressive political views, and always added their pronouns to their social media bios, or email signatures. I floated inside both spheres, and both would talk down about the other side.
Most people never directly communicate directly with those they disagree with about values in a direct way. These people would of course encounter each other on the daily, however there was seldom any deep or contentious conversations about the values anyone held. I doubt that anyone truly knows how others think or feel about any given subject. People seldom ever confront those they believe are wrong about a set of values they hold. They instead silo themselves ever deeper within their social clique. Challenging someone else leaves yourself opened to be challenged, and people prefer to not have to critically think about the things they believe in. They would rather hold them as they are, believing inherently for what they are. Even in college, a supposed place for discussion, I had trouble truly engaging in discussions with those I disagreed with. Even I myself found that I would talk only to those that more or less broadly agreed with me, and only had minor disagreements.
This is true virtually everywhere. Society exists through group consensus. There are seldom any societies that handle sincere and deeply held disagreements anything less than violently. Even in America, it took until the 1860’s for the disagreements over slavery, and the state’s right to leave the Union, became violent. The reason it took that long was due to how spread out the country was. The same is held today. Texas and California can exist in the same country because Californian laws do not directly affect Texans, and Texas law does not directly affect California. As stated above, the Civil War only became so because Southern slave laws, and Northern anti-slavery laws, were being codified in federal law and federal judicial law, and affecting both regions directly with laws they did not hold values to live under.
America is a regional country, hence why a federal republic allows it to function. If the US where a social democracy, a bare majority would be able to unilaterally dictate laws that would be applied everywhere, regardless if those who lived under those laws held those values or not. People can contend with living under tyranny so long as it’s tyranny they agree to live under. However, people tend to become exceedingly violent when that tyranny stands against their values. Bleeding Kansas was an example of the North and South confronting each other in open conflict over slavery because of the aforementioned federal and judicial laws that were affecting both sides.
I believe it to be foolish for a majority to dictate terms to a minority whom the majority does not live around. It would be wise for everyone involved to let the Romans live as Romans do, and for those who live outside of Rome, to live as they do.