John Adams was a believer in microcosm theory. What is this perspective, and how well does the Texas Legislature live up to its ideals?

What will be an ideal response?

Microcosm theory is the belief that a legislature should look like the larger society that it is elected to represent. This is most often measured demographically, where the racial, gender, religious, and socioeconomic qualities of the elected representatives on the whole should be a microcosm (a smaller version of reality) of Texas. Using this assessment, Texas falls far short of Adams’s ideal. The Texas Legislature has a larger number of white males among its ranks relative to the state population. Thus, women and racial minorities, such as African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, are mathematically underrepresented. Likewise, the legislature has a larger number of Protestants than Texas does as a whole, and our elected legislators are more well-to-do than the state’s population, so the poor get scant representation according to microcosm theory.