Why not just take it a step further and get rid of the Senate? The Senate is a far worse democratic representation.
Maine, Alaska, Hawaii... what's the point of being a far-off-forgotten small population state to a superpower if the other neighboring nation is offering better protection of my interests?
The Senate was designed to ensure that even small states had their interests represented and not drowned out in the tyranny of the majority.
The Senate was specifically designed to prevent the challenges faced by the late Roman empire which was constantly putting down far-off remote provincial rebellions. They had to constantly move whole armies from one side of the empire to another putting down one rebellion after another - often supported by the neighboring unfriendly nation.
Without the Senate, Russia would have had a much easier time starting "independence" movements in Alaska during the Cold War.
It doesn't make sense to compare the USA as a whole to other, much smaller countries. Federalism doesn't make sense on a small scale.
You mention Maine and Alaska which I imagine you believe would join Canada? Canada doesn’t give each territory equal representation. They’ve also not suffered a territory leaving despite the various secession campaigns (US has those too even with the Senate, strange).
I think there’s just very little evidence the Senate is some magic fairy dust that keeps our country together when many, many other countries don’t have such a similar body and they’re not all falling to pieces.
Individual states do not have the resources to oppose our military. They may be larger than European countries, but they don’t have the military power of those European countries and our country’s military is stronger than the entire EU. Even if a state like Texas were to revolt, it would be notably less successful than Ukraine is versus Russia. Also never mind that this revolting state wouldn’t be receiving foreign aid (I don’t think even hostile countries like China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea would even attempt to get involved in an internal conflict). It is pure fantasy to believe an individual state could succeed in seceding from the US.
Now could a large enough coalition of states succeed? Sure. But I was responding to the parent’s idea that Maine or Alaska or Hawaii would just randomly decide to up and go because they didn’t have the Senate.
This is all on top of a technological society very very fragile.(https://www.wsj.com/articles/assault-on-california-power-sta...) It only takes very few trained operators to take out grids/city networks and cause millions in damage.
I think you very much underestimate the reality of succession in America.
It is a bit funny that you mentioned Canada - given that Quebec barely voted down independence by a 0.2% margin in 1995. Something that would have been a disaster for Canada to be literally split in THREE pieces.
..and it may very well have led to armed conflict as violence in separatist violence in Quebec was not uncommon.
Separatist movements are very very often superstitiously supported by foreign rivals and it is worth quite a bit of political power to physically keep you nation together.
> Individual states do not have the resources to oppose our military.
They do not need to. When independence movements are militarily squashed, that is when foreign rivals step in officially to fund and supply weapons to them. It happened in Kosovo, Taiwan, Donbass, South Ossentia, etc..
> I don’t think even hostile countries like China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea would even attempt to get involved in an internal conflict
I hesitate to even reply to this comment. I think you know, reading it, how wrong it is.
The examples given are a far cry from a situation like a US state leaving. A couple are Russian-armed separatists from neighboring countries. No state’s relationship to the US at all resembles Taiwan’s to China. And Kosovo is in a region that has dealt with strife since the early 1990’s.
A state seceding from the US would look very different than these.
Perhaps they would try to give aid covertly, but they wouldn’t risk a hot war. Intervening in a state seceding would be seen as a direct attack on US soil, very different than us aiding Ukraine or Russia aiding Syria.
Why is the US as culturally-homogeneous as it is?
Because small states' population's interests are represented. How are they represented...?
American culture is only homogeneous in their terms because they reject every American cultural framework but their own as illegitimate, a cancer to be burned out, a corruption of the true ideals which they believe they alone uphold. Talk to me about cultural unity when they stop talking about killing liberals for sport or calling LGBT people "groomers" or passing laws forcing women to flee from their states for fear of their own safety.
I don't want to fulminate - I'm getting angry just thinking about this - but if there's been a running theme in American politics in the last decade, it's been the destruction of the facade of cultural homogeneity by right-wing rural culture, and that's with a system designed to pander to them as much as possible, because apparently 245 years of shared history and heritage and citizenship in the world's last superpower isn't incentive enough to keep them in the union. At this point I almost welcome civil war just so we can just get it over with already.
Rant over. I need a break from this place before I get a talking to.
O_o Looking at it from the perspective of rural culture might be useful.
The idea that "global free trade made us all richer, but poor and middle income rural America by cents and upper class and tech by millions, while leaving the former un- or under-employed" isn't without basis.
And specifically, explains lived experience over the past few decades in rural America.
At some point, you have to stop being angry at people for thinking the way they do... and start being curious about why those ideas are attractive to them.
In the lead up to WW2, Nazis in Germany appealed to the ailing rural population by telling them the Jews, Marxists, social democrats, feminists, and intellectuals were the reason they struggled.
I suppose I don't have to draw the modern US connections. I don't have to say replace Jews with globalists or George Soros or the media or Hollywood. Like we all see the similarities, right?
Yes, rural America is suffering. I grew up in rural America. The people are being misled into focusing their ire on immigrants, BLM, CRT, and transpeople. Sometimes I wish I could shake them and tell them while they're fuming over an imaginary culture war, their politicians are grifting them out of their donations and using the levers of government to make their suffering worse. But that ever growing suffering just provides a hotter fire to feed more grievances to.
Don't get me wrong, Democrats have been pro-corporation and offshored jobs just as much, but they've certainly done more for lower income people than Republicans. If you look at the extremes of both parties, Bernie's or AOC's policies would do far more for them than MTG or Matt Gaetz's. Sadly, contesting the 2020 election is more important to their 2022 vote than actual tangible plans to improve their economic conditions. Oh sure they'll give lip service to the grievances of soaring fuel prices or inflation, but not a one will give a tangible plan to do anything about it.
And that's where I'm at. I know rural people have real grievances. I just haven't seen a way to connect them to electing people who instead focus on improving those real grievances rather than feeding them imaginary grievances to get outraged over.
That's like asking, what's the point of Truckee being a far-off-forgotten small population city of California if the neighboring state of Nevada is offering better protection of their interests?
Well, for starters, Truckee leaving CA and joining NV would require an awful amount of paperwork (and good luck convincing even half of the population that it's worth the hassle), and what would NV offer that CA doesn't? Instead of being a forgotten small population city of California, now it gets to be a forgotten small population city of Nevada.
Other than, say, the absolutely immense advantage of belonging to the most prosperous, most powerful country in the world.
But, yes, undoubtedly thee are quite a few states that are narcissistic enough to think they’re better off going it alone, their tiny population of a few hundred thousand and their easily corruptible political goofs versus the economic, political, and media forces of major world powers.
California and Texas, the obvious examples, would be the ~37th (around Ukraine and Canada) and ~51st (around Nepal and Venezuela) largest countries by population in the world.
I would argue a person in Wyoming's vote being worth 65x that of person's in California has no benefit.