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In our country I think a lot of this from a political perspective comes from the aftermath of the civil war when the idea of states rights and autonomy was essentially chucked out the window.

Very much so, I believe.

It got immeasurably worse under Wilson and FDR, but I think the roots of it lie with the idea that one national government holding the vast majority of the power is better than 40 or 50 states holding most of the power and effectively competing with one another to be freer (or more horrible) as the case may be.

But you accurately peg this statism business as commencing with Lincoln. Yes, Wilson just expanded on it, as did FDR.

At this point I view it as mostly academic. We are where we are and I’m more concerned about how we get to a better end place.

Some years ago I read a wonderful essay that effectively argued that we don't get to a better end place. The premise of the essay was that things get modified until they break, and rather than being repaired, the solution is usually upheaval and revolution. The essay used the Roman Empire as an example.

Modifications to an existing system don't get removed because there is usually an intractable advocacy group for keeping whatever changes were made. A very good example of this phenomena is pointed out in this wonderful article called "Pigeons rats and Democrats."

What I fear is that we will not be able to remove the bad modifications (changes) to our system, and it will eventually collapse.

And again my opinion is not widely shared at FR, but I don’t see politics as offering much in the way of a solution. You don’t fix spiritual and cultural problems through elections.

I believe the adage that "politics is downstream of culture" is apt. We won't fix anything until we can get at least equal voice with the people who are polluting the information streams with nonsense. Till conservatives have some degree of equal voice in the entertainment/news industries as well as academia, nothing is going to get fixed.