As Jefferson said, the American principle supports the states as versus the central government, the counties as versus the states, the towns as versus the counties, the wards as versus the towns, and the individual as versus all. Radical decentralism is the libertarian principle.
Originally posted on the LewRockwell.com blog
I agree.
It appears many Americans have come to believe that there is a power greater than themselves that will take care of their every want/need. It's a bit like believing in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
Since Washington, DC is so far-removed from most people's lives and since America has become so dominant in the world, it probably appears to most people as if our prosperity is magical and results from the power and kindness of the 'Gods' in the federal government.
I see many, many people in my daily life who are NOT self-reliant and would be in deep trouble if 'the system' failed. They have no real-world skills and live in a cubicle, drive to work in a cylinder and work in another cubicle all day. They are cogs in a BIG machine with no real control in their lives. The government has managed to make many people dependent on it for their daily existence.
One can imagine the intrepid, brave and resourceful people who left England and settled the New World were VERY competent and self-reliant. This allowed them and their immediate offspring to have the courage and grit to pull off the American Revolution and draft the Constitution.
Sadly, too much time and distance has passed since then and people will probably require a major crisis in order to wake up and start taking charge of their own lives.
It makes me proud to live in a country like this when I hear talk like this. If anyone has that on a shirt I will buy it and where it whereever I go.
Well said, as usual, Mr. Rockwell. Amazing how such a simple concept has been utterly lost over the course of American history.
We have become so preoccupied with our own importance (or "national greatness") that we have forgotten the only thing that made America and her success possible in the first place was the courage of an oppressed minority to withdraw its consent from a tyrannical government.
I think local government autonomy is the best way to secure freedom because individual in that small community can decide to live by their own laws. This prevents them from passing laws over people outside that community and people from passing laws over them which is the best way to preserve an individual's right to live the way they want to. Ideally you would want individuals to pass laws over their own person but human nature seems to want to deny this so the best way to overcome human nature and ensure individual liberty is to have the governing authority of our lives be as local as possible. This prevents us from controlling the lives of other people and other people from controlling our own lives.