Tuesday, February 28, 2006

The Rise and Fall of the American Republic Part. 1

Republics function under very similar restrictions to cells. Any given cell has a terminal limiting ratio: surface area to volume. What this means is that if the cell gets too big, if the volume increases past a certain point, the cell no longer has the necessary surface area needed to supply the cell's volume with the nutrients it needs to survive. This is metaphorically true for republics literally and figuratively. As Adam pointed out to me the other day, Rome had no capability to feed itself. The whole of North Africa was farmed into a desert over decades of effort trying to keep the republic supplied with bread. But this ratio has more pressing figurative implications.

The original colonies started the fight for independence over a simple notion, "no taxation without representation." This was perhaps not the singular impetus for the Revolutionary War, but it was the rhetoric that catalyzed the colonies into action. Republics are of the people. That's their shtick. And after the war we rose in power, having great resources both natural and theoretical from which the cell of our nation was born.

The current political state of our nation is that of a representative democracy,--those two words being loaded with meaning.
Democracy, because the founders recognized that the "right" of self governing arose from the people, and that there was no such thing as America without those people. Representative, because they understood that as a nation increases in size no one citizen can know enough to be informed adequately to vote in a meaningful way on every conceivable thing that a nation would face.

Here's the catch. Though there are some interesting parallels between Rome's dependence on imported wheat, and our dependence on imported oil, there is a larger issue at stake. Our republic has grown to such enormous girth and diversity that the notion of representative democracy is just that, a notion, it's no longer a reality. This has created an instability in our nation, having a system that was designed to work with limited population over limited geographical area. Now, this instability can be solved in one of two ways. Radical centralization or radical decentralization. Either the Federal government needs to have more power, or the states need to become the real seat of power.

The current administation is trying desperately to centralize. But the situation that centralization creates is too similar to the original impetus the colonies used for war. Given the diversity and size of our nation centralization precludes representation.

6 Comments:

Blogger King Rupert said...

I think the only safe--though as of now, uncharted--route is state's rights. I don't know exaclty how that would look or work, how the state's would interact with Federal legislation. But it seems to me that the pitfalls: less global power due to the diverse needs and reappropriation of funds, potential for rougher boarders between states, secession, and so on and so forth are welcome compared to the pitfalls of centralization.

6:14 PM  
Blogger Nick said...

I think we should become like Europe, and the states should all become their own countries. (unfortunately, then we'd eventually have the exact same problem, except multiplied by 50. Not to leave out the possibility that it could cause the "former" US to become a giant land and religious war ground, much like the middle east.)

7:40 PM  
Blogger P said...

Here's the problem with leaving it to the states. The higher areas of population would become the ruling faction. So basically the cities would over power the rural community and smaller towns. For example. Seattle would total rule Washington, completely destroying Spokane and the smaller towns like Edwall and Ritzville. (they already do with things like getting more money for transportation etc.) So the power would go to those with the money. Democratic western washington would over power republican Spokane. Not living in any of the other states right now I'm not sure if that would happen else where. But I'm sure that it can't be a unique problem. Perhaps redrawing state lines, creating larger states (more like provinces), and leaving a lot of decisions to an even smaller local city/town government would work. Talk to people who live in other countries like Canada (really big country) or Europe (really small countries), they have similar complaints. It's hard to balance government in such a way that all parties are given fair legislation or government support. Does the amount of people matter, or the amount of groups? Is it more important that 100, 000 people voted yes versus 50, 000 no. Or is it better to listen to groups like students, blue collar workers, white collar workers, farmers and work with individual needs. Is this possible?

12:20 AM  
Blogger King Rupert said...

The answer is simple, but not easy to accomplish. The way that Washington state is represented Federally takes into account both population (house of representatives) and the right to be represented as one of fifty states (senate). The problem that we have now is that a republic is not designed to give a citizen of Washington state a voice in the Federal government. However, if states were granted more autonomy, more funding, Spokane has much more say in what happens in Spokane, and eastern Washington, and Washington as a whole, than it does currently as one city amongst a nation of cities.

In short represetative government makes sense in bite size pieces. The smaller the piece (states, counties, cities, neighborhoods) the greater the opportunity for the individual to have a say. At least to me this makes government easier to swallow.

9:45 AM  
Blogger King Rupert said...

Here's the thing, right now state's rights exist but only insofar as they don't step outside federal rights. For instance, California can legalize marijuana for medical purposes, but the FBI can still arrest residents of California for possession. Now, that's neither here nor there, but it illustrates the problem of granting individual freedoms, even states' freedoms in a republic of this size.

I recognize that there certain difficulties arise--how is the military structured for instance? Who funds it? Who decides if we go to war? Can one state go to war? But these are the necessary evils of avoiding inevitable nasty fall and oppressive power that come from centralization.

What I want to explore in this debate is not to structure America into a model of the UN, or ex-Soviet Union, or even the EU for that matter. But like our country has often done in the past, to create a new solution to a new (or if not new than previously unsolved) problem. Again, I'm not looking to return to the thirteen colonies, we're much too big for that.

4:14 PM  
Blogger King Rupert said...

I can't help but feel like you're saying, "no matter how flawed the system, or where the flaws are taking us, don't worry about it, we're better off than we were then."

Yes, the Roman world was smaller than ours, that is precisely why we need new tools and new ideas. And yes, our American Republic uses some of those new tools. But they are fast outliving their effectiveness.

7:28 PM  

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