Our country is divided in many ways, but one of the oldest and most obvious divisions is between big cities and everyone else. Thanks to the American Founders, the Constitution boosts the power of rural America in several ways. One of these, the Electoral College, was decisive in this presidential election.

Long ago, rural people were mostly serfs or slaves. Power was in the cities, where warlords, priests, or kings ruled. Outside the city walls, farmers and other laborers lived only to provide for the ruling elites and their armies. European feudalism evolved to lock in this structure and kee...