Persecution always backfires, but it wouldn’t be surprising. Cooption seems to be the modern strategy, and it is much more insidious and successful.
“Persecution always backfires, but it wouldn’t be surprising”
Federal government dispensed with the 10th Amendment post Civil War to a large extent. It grew in scope and size ever since. Expanding on that model, it has been to the federal governments advantage to increasingly usurp every Constitutional limit imposed upon it.
Every American will need to have some refuge from an all-powerful government that increasingly wishes to tax, confiscate, redistribute, punish or destroy.
You may need it for religious purposes - to hide a priest as they did then, or to hide yourselves, as was necessary in the Diary of Anne Frank, or to hide your guns when they come knocking, or your gold when that becomes illegal, or to hide texts and data....there are so many ways that government is expanding in scope and size - and there are so many people waiting to be on the receiving end of that which is “redistributed” that everyone has to think about it these days if they are reasoned individuals.