I do not believe it is an issue of size; I believe it is a matter of education, greed and ethics.
As the distance (time wise) from the revolution grew the people took their liberty and freedom for granted. The same thing is happening in South Korea, a very small country. It is what people do...they forget.
The Obambots have been manipulated from day one. Now the effects of his anti-business promises is setting in. A friend of mine at Disneyland said that she lost 1/3 of her crew this week. This is education at its finest.
All this CHANGE has produced a new effort to educate oneself on the principles of government. I believe that education is the answer, not smaller factions without the education.
Some quotations regarding the size of a republic...and mind you, this was all brought up in reference to the original 13 colonies...
Whoever seriously considers the immense extent of territory comprehended within the limits of the United States, together with the variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of extent, and number of inhabitants in all; the dissimilitude of interest, morals, and policies, in almost every one, will receive it as an intuitive truth, that a consolidated republican form of government therein, can never form a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your posterity, for to these objects it must be directed: this unkindred legislature therefore, composed of interests opposite and dissimilar in their nature, will in its exercise, emphatically be, like a house divided against itself.
Anti-federalist papers, Cato #3
It is natural to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist. In a large republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too great to be placed in any single subject; he has interest of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy, great and glorious, by oppressing his fellow citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country. In a large republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is easier perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses are of less extent, and of course are less protected.
Montesquieu —as quoted by Brutus and Cato, Anti-federalist papers.
It’s funny that conservative all laud the Federalist Papers, and almost never mention the Anti-Federalists. The Founders understood that what they were undertaking was an experiment, not a fixed and known perfect solution. The truth is, much of the warnings of the anti-federalists turned out to be correct. We’d be wise to pay as much attention to them as we do to the Federalists, who on many scores were well-intentioned, but completely wrong, as time has shown. (See the debates regarding “general welfare”, “necessary and proper”, the power of the judiciary, etc)
”Not only is a democratic people led by its own taste to centralize its government, but the passions of all the men by whom it is governed constantly urge it in the same direction. It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves. It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization may be injurious to the state, since they are centralizing it for their own benefit. Among the public men of democracies, there are hardly any but men of great disinterestedness or extreme mediocrity who seek to oppose the centralization of government; the former are scarce, the latter powerless.”
. . . . . Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Appendix Z. – Vol. II, p. 296
Is it ‘great disinterestedness’ or ‘extreme mediocrity’ that comes to mind when one considers such characters as Pelosi, Frank, Specter, Reid, Murtha, Snowe, &c (including the Most Merciful, the Anointed One, himself). What happens to a republic when power is seized by nothing but ‘extreme mediocrities’ in the absence of any persons of ‘great disinterestedness’? Size may indeed be an objection to the functionality of a republic, but the existence of ‘extreme mediocrity’ seems more likely the source for the failure of republics.
Just one person’s opinion. Nothing more.