The Bigger They Are

When you become what you used to be against, you lose.

It's hard to miss the irony of our gigantism. We started out by outmaneuvering the British-not hard considering that the decision-making power was impossibly remote from the action, that the British forces were governed by a set of rules and conventions that inhibited their flexibility, and that, already, British forces were engaged all over the world.

The group of agrarian republics envisioned by a Jefferson or a John Taylor was designed to create local centers of decision, a group of agile, loosely-associated organisms responding to local conditions. The tragedy of America is the story of how it mutated into an empire, both internally and externally, and hence outgrew viability.

A brontosaurus no doubt means well, but its tiny confused brain is radically inadequate to govern its astonishing body. It tramples everything until it finally runs out of vegetation or collapses under its own weight. Here's hoping the United States government returns to the decentralized principals of its founding, lest it go the way of the dinosaur.

Will we learn from the mistakes the Brits made and remake ourselves as they did and still remain an important world power? Or will we wind up like past empires, a nation in name only, weakened and under siege from all sides? We got rid of one King named George; what do we do with the current one?