In an excerpt from his new book, Mark Steyn‘s latest column posted at Human Events discusses the downside of an increased reliance on the federal government to solve America’s problems.
The unceasing centralization of power nullifies the American Revolution. Even surviving local institutions aren’t as local as they used to be. The nearly 120,000 school boards of America in 1940 have been consolidated into a mere 15,000 today, leaving them ever more to the mercies of the professional “educator” class.
If this trend is going to be reversed, it will be by states and municipalities both ignoring Washington and, when necessary, defying it. “It is important to recognize the distinction,” said President Reagan in 1987, “between problems of national scope (which may justify Federal action) and problems that are merely common to the States.” The former ought to be a very limited category: The best way to save “the United States” is to give it less to do, and the best way to do that is with a Tenth Amendment movement.
Steyn goes on to tell the story of a friend who serves as a New Hampshire “selectman.” Fed up with escalating costs and red tape associated with a project to replace a local bridge, Steyn’s friend proposed what is now a novel idea:
Screw the state. Let’s do it ourselves.
“Screw the state” is not a Tocquevillian formulation, but he would have certainly agreed with the latter sentiment. When something goes wrong, a European demands to know what the government’s going to do about it. An American does it himself. Or he used to—in the Jacksonian America a farsighted Frenchman understood so well. Big Government is better understood as remote government. If we can’t “do it ourselves” when it comes to painting schoolrooms or building bridges, we should certainly confine it to the least remote level of government.
