In short, geographic dispersal was an actual premise of the Constitution’s original design. It was a pillar undergirding the very viability of our system of representation.

No more. Madison couldn’t anticipate Facebook, and Facebook — with its historically unprecedented power to bind factions over great distances — knocked this pillar out from under us. In this sense, Facebook and the equally powerful social media platforms that followed it broke our democracy. They didn’t mean to. It’s like when your kid plays with a beach ball in the house and breaks your favorite lamp. But break it they did.

Now, the rest of us have to fix it.

Representation as designed cannot work under current conditions. We have no choice but to undertake a significant project of democracy renovation. We need an alternative to that original supporting wall to restore structural soundness to our institutions.