Political Theory -- Catch All

[lawtig02]

Apologies if this thread is duplicative.

Rousseau says in The Social Contract that for individual freedom to be maintained in a communal environment, the citizens of a nation cannot live in a large area, too spread out to come together regularly in a direct form of democracy, and they cannot live in such different geographic circumstances as to be unable to unite under common laws.

Is America just too big to maintain a sustainable social contract? Our global strength and security depends on our size and relative power. But can we maintain our freedom (against, most pressingly, the authoritarian impulses of modern Republicans) in such a large and disunified geographical footprint?

I'm returning to my college PoliSci roots in this age of disruption. Would welcome any discussion along these lines.

 

[Huh?]

I don't buy it. We've been the size we are for 70 years and technology has made us smaller than ever.

 

[superrific]

We've been a very big and geographically sprawling country for a long time. I think the problem isn't that we're too big. It's that social media makes us too small. It used to be harder to gaslight the masses because you needed more than one news outlet and a twitter feed.

Plus, Rousseau's Social Contract theory is interesting as a moral philosophy. But what you're citing isn't that; it's a set of empirically verifiable/falsifiable sociological claims that, like most of what was produced in his day, were mostly just hunches and based on very little.

Also, remember that uniting together under common laws was much, much harder when the fastest means of communication was horse messenger.

 

[lawtig02]

I'm not saying Rousseau was right. Just trying to get a discussion going. But I will say, is 70 years, or even 250 years, long enough to be able to test his hypothesis? We've had a lot to bring us together over that time (and one glaring period that almost destroyed it all). But is it possible we're now seeing his small-state theory playing out?

The problem, of course, is that our dividing lines are not clean or clear. We are nation of pockets of liberalism interspersed within a vast landscape of authoritarianism.

 

[CFordUNC]

I don't think that it's the size and scope of our geography that is our problem. I think it's a combination of the fact that partisan gerrymandering silences the political voices of a whole lot of people all over the country and also that empty land has far more of a "say" in our national body politic than it should. Far, far too many people in our country don't get to be actual participants in democracy and decision-making because they live in the "wrong" areas. There's plenty of blue folks in red states, and red folks in blue states, that essentially have no voice or representation because of the way that we cling to archaic old practices in Congress.