>how do we ensure the mistakes of the past wouldn't be repeated, only with a smaller USA?
I believe most of our problems in the United States stem from 2 major problems:
1. The people are split between two fundamentally different ideas of what America should be.
2. Corporations lobbying the government at the expense of
Liberal states like Massachusetts and Cali clearly want a European style Socialist Democracy, while southern and many Midwest states prefer little government involvement and low taxes. Because we are fundamentally opposed in what we want from our government, this leads to us supporting candidates who don't represent us, simply because they are not the other side. Look at Obama for instance. No liberal actually likes Obama. They feel like he is too soft and not liberal enough on lots of issues, and there's several instances where he screws over liberal states with policies they don't like. The same goes for those of us in red states. If we were to split, we would probably not take any liberal states with us. This would give us candidates who are more representative of us, and who we would have more control over. We would be free to make a more conservative government that liberals have been preventing us from making.
Corporate lobbying is pretty common knowledge so I won't explain that.
The final way to avoid the mistakes of the United States is to make a much more limited federal government, and specifically spell out some state rights so that they may not be infringed, like they are now.
We should definitely take the bill of rights, and we should probably update the due process part of amendment V in the constitution to better reflect our modern digital age. Maybe add a section in the first amendment to make it so hate speech is free speech.
The Federal Government should be weaker (obviously), and I have many ideas for making the federal government smaller but I'll just list my major ideas:
The Federal Government may not give out welfare, welfare may only be provided by the state.
The Federal Government may not subsidize any industry.
The Federal Government will have some serious restrictions on the money it gives to states and cities (These are essentially used to bribe states into accepting things like common core and to make states more dependent on the federal government)
The Federal Government may not own land that resides within a state, it must ask the state for permission to use said state's land.
The Government cannot have a deficit or borrow money without 2/3rds approval from congress. If debt accrued by the federal government passes a certain debt to GDP threshold, it is no longer allowed to borrow money
Limit to the amount of laws that can be created each year.
2/3rds house approval needed to go to war
I'd also make changes to how the presidency works and how Federal Agencies including the FDA work too, but I won't detail that in this post.
States Rights:
States have the right to secede(obviously)
States have the right to nullify any law they deem unconstitutional.
States may convene, and if 2/3rds of them agree, they may repeal any law created by the federal government.
States may convene, and if 2/3rds of them agree they may remove the president or any justice on the supreme court.