American Localism

American Localism

In his book Timely Renewal, James W. Lucas makes a particularly effective case for decentralization of government power and placing governance as close to the people, in geographic terms, as possible. Arguing that large federal government (and its associated suffocating regulations and debt) and large corporations (and their anti-competitive monopolies) have brought declining creativity, productivity and standards of living, Lucas argues for a return of "American localism." Large-scale nationalism and mercantilism have killed the spirits of entrepreneurism and local community. The natural relationships among humans have been severed as integration at greater and ever larger scales abstract us from one another at ever increasing levels, leading to dysfunction and dehumanization. Is it any wonder Congress is so polarized and entrenched?

Politics and economics "as if people matter" demands decentralization and devolution of power. Lucas writes:

Progressive, anti-globalization activist David Korten considers it "to be a near-universal truth that diversity is the foundation of developmental progress in complex systems, and uniformity is the foundation of stagnation and decay.... Our challenge is to create a locally rooted planetary system biased toward the small, the local, the cooperative, the resource-conserving, the long-term, and the needs of everyone." Strong local economies "encourage the rich, flourishing diversity of robust local cultures and generate the variety of experience and learning that is essential to the enrichment of the whole." (David C. Korten. When Corporations Rule the World, second edition. San Francisco: Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and Kumarian Press, 200-, pp. 240-241.) A key principle in achieving these ends is that "governance authority and responsibility are

located in the smallest, most local system unit possible to maximize opportunity for direct, participatory democracy." Such communities are strongest when they have strong social capital, for which locally owned businesses are a key element. (Korten, pp. 245, 251.)

The author quotes another historian William Appleman Williams, who proposed replacing the institutions of "American empire" with a federation of regional communities. "The price of liberty is not so much vigilance as involvement. If you want to rest, vote for a dictator. The crucial arena for such citizen groups is and will remain the states. That is where social movements have to be build."

(Lucas, pp. 60-61)

Lucas reminds us that simple arithmetic shows that states are more representative of and responsive to citizen needs than the federal government. "The 435 members of the national House of Representatives have on average more than 700,000 constituents in each of their districts.... In contrast, the more than 7,000 state legislators represent on average just over 50,000 constituents each."

Those who pine for government activism should return their efforts to the States. The federal bureaucracy has become so bloated and the Congress so plodding that change at the federal level takes decades of tireless lobbying, advertising, politicking, and horse-trading. It took 100 years to pass so-called "universal health-care." However, the states are close to the people, both in heart and geography, and there are less people across a state for which to account in the eventual compromise, making conversation more natural and participation for the average citizen possible (big money campaigns at the local level are not of concern). Change can be tried with greater ease and nimbleness, and any potential failure is contained in its scope to the state at hand. Success of experimentation is then rewarded by other states seeking to emulate the model, latching onto the successful government involvement.

Those who love freedom and limited government clamor for a more vibrant federal-state balance as well. Jefferson said, "unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted in their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and families selected for the trust." Remembering that the federal government was put in place for continental defense and cooperation, the balance of an energetic federalism has the added benefit of diffusing power across a broad number of institutions, separated by thousands of miles, making coordination difficult, even in this age of the Internet (state governments cannot coordinate to call a federal Constitutional Convention, it seems, never mind some effort more complex).

In his book, Lucas does a fantastic job of tracing the rise of federal involvement, control, and centralization. While his book is more focused on proposing constitutional amendments that would allow the People to take control of that document and reduce the tendency of the Supreme Court to continue sitting as a perpetual constitutional convention, Timely Renewal has highlighted the root of the current problems. I will look at some of those in the blog posts ahead, but first I'd like to take a sidebar to examine what this blog has repeatedly called out as the source of the modern-day federal-state imbalance of power - the Seventeenth Amendment.