200 Years of Corn and Twisters

Today marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. Just think where we'd be without Nebraska and Idaho. I'm not sure either, but I think they definitely named the Louisiana Purchase after the most fun part of that third of the nation, if not the most important part.

Obviously, the Purchase really was important to our national development. The addition of states to the Union during the first half of the 19th century was truly prodigious, and our vast hinterland created a vacuum that drew Americans westward, and created an eddy of myth, steak, and cowhide that flowed back East. The Purchase opened up the way for American dominance of the North American continent, since it removed one of the two great powers of the world at that time from what is now our soil. We would eventually eclipse the other - Britain - by virtue of our massive immigration rates and superior climate for most economic activity. Only recently has Canada surpassed the U.S. as an immigrant nation; perhaps not in absolute terms but definitely in percentage terms.

One of the great overlooked strengths of the U.S. is our domestic food production. This was well known and part of the American myth through the Second World War, when we were really the breadbasket of democracy. Now, however, farmers get short mythological shrift, and really don't have the same status in the heady language of American politicians that they used to. The fact remains, however, that our self-sufficiency in food is crucial to many American policies. Other strong economies, especially Japan, are very dependent on foreign food imports, and it absolutely affects their policies (and balances of trade).