Lucille
04-22-2013, 02:59 PM
Bust it up!
"Whenever something is wrong, something is too big."
--Leopold Kohr
"Small is Beautiful."
--Leopold Kohr and E. F. Schumacher
"Small is beautiful, but it is also efficient."
--Nassim Taleb (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448.html)
What Keeps the States United?
Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century, Donald Livingston, ed., Pelican, 272 pages
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-keeps-the-states-united/
The American polity is beset by seemingly intractable problems: widespread, long-term unemployment; stagnating income; wealth increasingly concentrated among the few; trillion-dollar annual deficits; interminable wars.
Constitutional liberties, dating back in some instances to Magna Carta, are being jettisoned, ostensibly to protect against terrorism. Through the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress has empowered the president to imprison without charges or trial any American whom he decides, based on secret evidence, is a threat to national security. Barack Obama and his attorney general claim the president has the right to execute summarily anyone in the world—not excluding Americans—without due process of law. The Pentagon has been lending unmanned drones to local and state law enforcement agencies to spy on citizens without search warrants.
The 2008 election was viewed by many as a repudiation of torture and other dangers to civil liberties supported by George W. Bush. Five years later Obama seemingly has doubled down on policies that he had condemned. Despite voter angst, America’s political institutions keep serving up more of the same. Public disapproval of Congress has lately been as high as 90-95 percent. The system is widely seen as “broken.”
According to Rethinking American Union for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Donald Livingston, those seeking a cure for America’s political dysfunction should consider a rarely mentioned topic, that of size and scale. The thesis of this collection of essays is that American government has grown too large and too centralized to be compatible with free, effective, or truly representative politics. The authors agree on the unacceptability of top-down government as practiced in this country: having 435 House members, 100 senators, nine Supreme Court justices, and one president rule more than 300 million people in one-size-fits-all fashion. The authors share the belief, dating back to ancient Greece, that, to be genuinely self-governing, republics must be small in population and territory, i.e., wholly unlike America. They consider ways to devolve political power to smaller, more manageable units of government. With varying degrees of persuasiveness, the authors address philosophical, political, moral, and constitutional issues bearing on such a task.
Livingston, in a thoughtful essay, presents several possibilities...
"Whenever something is wrong, something is too big."
--Leopold Kohr
"Small is Beautiful."
--Leopold Kohr and E. F. Schumacher
"Small is beautiful, but it is also efficient."
--Nassim Taleb (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448.html)
What Keeps the States United?
Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century, Donald Livingston, ed., Pelican, 272 pages
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-keeps-the-states-united/
The American polity is beset by seemingly intractable problems: widespread, long-term unemployment; stagnating income; wealth increasingly concentrated among the few; trillion-dollar annual deficits; interminable wars.
Constitutional liberties, dating back in some instances to Magna Carta, are being jettisoned, ostensibly to protect against terrorism. Through the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress has empowered the president to imprison without charges or trial any American whom he decides, based on secret evidence, is a threat to national security. Barack Obama and his attorney general claim the president has the right to execute summarily anyone in the world—not excluding Americans—without due process of law. The Pentagon has been lending unmanned drones to local and state law enforcement agencies to spy on citizens without search warrants.
The 2008 election was viewed by many as a repudiation of torture and other dangers to civil liberties supported by George W. Bush. Five years later Obama seemingly has doubled down on policies that he had condemned. Despite voter angst, America’s political institutions keep serving up more of the same. Public disapproval of Congress has lately been as high as 90-95 percent. The system is widely seen as “broken.”
According to Rethinking American Union for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Donald Livingston, those seeking a cure for America’s political dysfunction should consider a rarely mentioned topic, that of size and scale. The thesis of this collection of essays is that American government has grown too large and too centralized to be compatible with free, effective, or truly representative politics. The authors agree on the unacceptability of top-down government as practiced in this country: having 435 House members, 100 senators, nine Supreme Court justices, and one president rule more than 300 million people in one-size-fits-all fashion. The authors share the belief, dating back to ancient Greece, that, to be genuinely self-governing, republics must be small in population and territory, i.e., wholly unlike America. They consider ways to devolve political power to smaller, more manageable units of government. With varying degrees of persuasiveness, the authors address philosophical, political, moral, and constitutional issues bearing on such a task.
Livingston, in a thoughtful essay, presents several possibilities...