When America got too big, the idea of states' rights no longer worked

We have a problem, and it might just be unsolvable.

It isn't a question of ideology, either. Left, right, Democrat, Republican, Occupy protester, 'bagger -- none of them are going to solve this problem.

Our country is just too damn big.

The United States was founded 240 years ago as a nation of 3 million people and 13 states, only one of which didn't border on the Atlantic Ocean.

There were no such things as corporations, let alone multi-nationals. Most business was local, and most of the rich people in the country were involved deeply in their own communities.

Government did very little, and most interesting of all, did very little in terms of national defense. Indeed, with the exception of the War of 1812 and the Civil War, most of what the military did was clear the frontier and try to defend those Americans who settled in wild areas.


At the time the Constitution was enacted, 95 percent of Americans were in business for themselves, most of them as farmers. If someone failed, it was usually because they didn't work hard enough, and when they failed, it wasn't all difficult to set out for the West and usually get some free land.

In some places, that was as much as 160 acres. All anyone had to do was live on the land for a period of years -- usually five -- and improve it in the process by building a home and farming it.

When they moved, they moved from one state within a country into a territory that would someday become a state. They didn't go from being a citizen of Pennsylvania, for example, to becoming a citizen of Dakota Territory.

The last real example of someone taking that attitude was Robert E. Lee, who told President Lincoln in 1861 that if Virginia seceded he would go too because he considered himself more a Virginian than an American.

No one does that anymore, except for maybe Texans and those folks are crazy.

Well, there isn't any frontier anymore anywhere in the United States, and free land was gobbled up about a hundred years ago.

Everything got bigger and bigger, and with the coming of the Industrial Revolution all of a sudden there were folks who didn't work with their hands anymore. They just put up the money and paid other folks as little as they could.

Once we reached a point where the folks putting up the money didn't have to face the folks who worked for them -- and quite often never even met them -- something very fundamental had changed.

It isn't even all about money. If it were, it would be a slightly easier problem.

The real problem is that you have a large number of people whose desire is to exert power or control over others.

Can Congress ever work again?

Lots of them wind up in government. That desire for power can be equally bad even if the motive behind it is worthwhile. Just think of how many people would like to outlaw smoking, or drinking, or junk food.

The answer isn't to eliminate the government. Then all you have is the powerful taking advantage of the powerless.

But it shouldn't be about the government making things easier the the rich to make even more money.

At minimum, the government ought to serve as an honest broker. But when it can't even serve that function, there really isn't much hope.

We elect people to govern us who don't believe in government, which seems to be the height of craziness.

We don't even believe in each other anymore. There are folks on the left who hate right-wing Americans worse than any foreign enemy, and there are just as many on the right who feel the same way about the left.

We actually believe -- at least some of us do -- that the more guns we have, the safer we'll be.

There's an old saying that whom the gods would destroy, they first make crazy.

Welcome to the craziness that is America 2016.