Louisiana Purchase Blues

Did anybody stop and think, gee, maybe our government structure isn't set up right to handle so much more land? We start off with thirteen colonies and a population numbering in the thousands, and now we number about 300 million. Is there no pause to think maybe our structure can't handle it?

There's a good reason to think the Louisiana Purchase was the first step towards the Civil War. Much of North vs. South animosity centered around new states coming into the Union. The American revolution? Parliament certainly thought it could run an empire. These are but a few examples.

I believe if we want to maintain any kind of continuity, we have to watch out for the structure issue. The thirteen colonies were very small, and the voting restrictions (white, male, landowner) limited the political class even further. So, in a very real way, the experience and power of the citizen has all but disappeared.

This applies to all manner of governing structures. If we really want to do what we say we want to do, we need to rethink how our governing structures work.