As we start the year under another polarized U.S. Congress, I have been plagued by the question: Is America too big to govern?

A road trip from Boston to Chicago via Pennsylvania and Kentucky provided the perfect opportunity to put my question to the public — a fascinating experience that certainly enlivened my journey.

While I can’t claim that my sample size would meet scientific standards of proof, the random collection of individuals I met in parks, bars and on the sidewalks of towns I visited, made it difficult to see unity across states.

What did bring people together was a shared desire to live somewhere that aligned with their values — a firm distinction supposedly separating liberal from conservative places. But when I was told that those in the South are “cut from different cloth” from people in the North, I questioned whether I could ever find common values that could keep the country together.

Everyone I met was frustrated with the state of the country’s decline.

In West Virginia, a loss of values clarification was seen as the cause of much disintegration, through the absence of Christian teachings in schools. In Kentucky, a young man extolled that society’s decline owed more to race than religion.

Although these perspectives didn’t feature in conversations in Connecticut, visions there of the American dream featured moving to New York City and climbing the corporate ladder rather than “having a herd of goats that they could feed every day.” While some exemplified Thomas Jefferson’s vision that........

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