I thought I long ago ran this great quote from Bill Kauffman's Ain't My America, but apparently not. He is quoting John Randolph:
“No government, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, can be fit to govern me or those whom I represent.” He was right. A nation stretching three thousand miles over mountain and prairie and desert is ungovernable from a single city set on a coastal swamp. Or at least it cannot be governed with a sensitivity to local conditions, an intelligent awareness of the cultural diversity inherent in any healthy society. It can be governed by the brute force of an Internal Revenue Service and a Department of Homeland Security, but it cannot sustain the Republic's spirit.
