The Abbeville Institute has launched a new video series, “Is America Too Big?” The first video is here, featuring the left-wing decentralist Kirkpatrick Sale and the inimitable Donald Livingston, a philosopher of secession who also served as my undergraduate honors thesis advisor.
The Abbeville Institute is a broadly paleoconservative and paleolibertarian organization that promotes political decentralization within the context of the southern tradition. I highly recommend checking them out. Though their focus is on the South, the principles they espouse—the right of secession, decentralized government, and the importance of tradition and place—are applicable everywhere. As a Yankee, I never felt out of place at any of their events.
Emile
bdouglass
Benjamin David
Chuck O'Shea
Edmund Babbitt
joeptak
Kelse Hillery
Lucie
John David
prsancho
Radagast
The Lancastrian
wmsamuelbradford
It seems both people in this video reject the idea of increasing the size of the legislature without giving it serious consideration. Why couldn’t Congress be a body of 10,000?
I’d also question the notion that 30,000 is an ideal ratio of Representatives to citizens. Isn’t that, at least in part, a relic of the technology of the age? I would agree that one Representative for every 700,000 people (and it’s more like 900,000 in practice) is larger than idea, but the best number probably sits somewhere between.