Thomas Jefferson feared not cities as places, but concentration as a habit of rule. Pack enough people, money, and decision-rights into a few nodes and the old republican arts—local consent, civic responsibility, the everyday practice of self-government—atrophy. What he wanted most for the American experiment was not pastoral nostalgia but dispersed authority: many centers of … Continue reading Jefferson’s Warnings: Cities, Faction, and the Slow Erosion of the Republic