is America just too big??

[ckzona]

It would be a terrible idea to break up the US. Just stupid to even mention it, because its not going to happen.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

A big problem is that the Federal Government has overstepped its bounds. According to the founding documents of this country, states should be dealing with these regional concerns via their state boundaries. The fact is that too many things are coming out of Washington these days.

I don't think that America is too big. I think that America is being mismanaged because government is too busy getting into things that should be left to the people and/or their own states.

Right here in this quote we get to the heart of it. The structure set up in the Costitution is well designed to allow for a large country to function despite regional differences. Broad common interests are made the jurisdiction of the federal government, while the Constitution calls for other matters to be handled at the state level. If we actually still lived by the Constitution as originally framed, this would go a long way toward alleviating the angst of recent years over the sense that we have become a divided country.

A lot of that unease is due to the centralization of the government, leading people to worry that if the other side, whichever side they consider that to be, wins control in Washington, then ideas that people on the losing side detest will be imposed on the entire country. The way our government is supposed to function, as specified in the Constitution, most of the issues at the root of all this anxiety would be dealt with at the state and local levels, giving people the option of living in a place where the government policies are to their liking, without worrying about how things are done in other states.

Before we decide to break up the country, maybe we can try the radical experiment of returning to our roots, and maintaining the regionally varied but broadly unified nation originally laid out by our Founders. Worth a try, at least.

[southernnaturelover]

Originally Posted by jm31828

EXCELLENT post! Yes, the states that complain about big government are the same ones that are basically welfare states because they have too small of a population to sustain themselves. For example, Alaska- I heard a stat just recently regarding roads- for every dollar they pay into the federal government in highway taxes, they get over $5 BACK in federal funds. Do they really want to cut the federal government out completely? Not unless they wanted their own state taxes to go through the roof.

The federal government owns a lot of land in many states. Also, we all benefit from the resources that come from Alaska.

It's kinda like with Louisiana, it should be a very wealthy state because of the oil and gas industry (in addition to fishing), but it's not. The rest of us benefit more from Louisiana's resources than Louisiana residents do. Same goes for West Virginia with it's coal, they should be much better off than what they are, but we all demand cheap electricity dont we?