Strong Local Self-Government is the Keystone to Preserving Human Freedom
Proverbs 11:14 “A nation will fall when there is no direction, but with many advisers there is victory.”
We know from history that power automatically becomes more centralized and the purpose of our Constitution was to prevent that from happening. When power becomes more centralized we find that the freedom of the individual is destroyed because the decision-making is done by the officers in central government. We see this happening in our country even today with some of the laws that are being passed and the federal government giving executive orders to the states.
In Anglo-Saxon times the people took pride in their participation in decision-making process. We see the same example in ancient Israel where families were divided up into multiples of tens, 50s, hundreds, and thousands and where problems were solved on the local level.
Thomas Jefferson saw the advantage of the strong local Anglo-Saxon self-government. Historian Richard Frothingham pointed out the local self-government in ancient England with the division into burghs, counties, shires, etc. and where the inhabitants had a voice in managing their own affairs.
Although the crown stepped in and deprived the people of the power of local rule, when these people pulled away from the mother country and migrated to America the idea of local self-rule reappeared and began to frame the laws which were to protect the freedom of the individual and to provide a healthy local self-government. It was Thomas Jefferson who said: “The way to have a good and safe government is not the trusted all to one, but to be divided among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions he is competent to perform best.”
He went on to say: “The national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the state governments with the civil rights, laws, police, administration of what concerns the state generally.”
Tocqueville, in his book called Democracy said that in America it was local self-rule that started and then expanded into a wider rule. It was not the other way around where they had central power and then brought down to self-rule on the local level.
James Madison emphasized the necessity of all possible authority to be in the states with the people and that the Constitution would delegate to the federal government only that which involves the whole people as a nation.
Our Founding Fathers meant for the federal government to be small and inexpensive because of the limited problems which would be assigned to it. Thomas Jefferson saw the federal government reduced to only foreign concerns. How different it is today when we see how bloated our federal government is in trying to give us “cradle-to-grave” instructions and with less safety and security.
Perhaps we should heed the prophetic warning of historian John Fiske who said: “If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid) when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow the local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and when the self-government of the states should have been so far lost as that of the departments of France, or even so closely limited as that of the counties of England – on that day the political career of the American people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably impaired.”
I think it is interesting to see how many states are suing the federal government. Why? Because of the encroachment of the federal government upon the States and going against the Constitution or law of the land.