Posts in "localism"

By Elliot Engstrom at 5:47AM

Apr 22, 2010

Freedom starts at home

There is quiet self-contradiction developing in the Tea Party movement that needs addressing, for it is a contradiction that, if left uncorrected, could turn a force with truly revolutionary potential into one more element of an oligarchic political stasis. This movement, which as a culture attempts in many ways to be an imitation of the founders, is steering away from its origins and failing to take hold of perhaps the single most important insight of the entire American Revolution – that national change is the result of local change, not its cause.

It was not homesickness that led Thomas Jefferson to return to his home state of Virginia and decline a reelection to Congress after penning the Declaration of Independence. At the forefront in Jefferson’s mind on July 5, 1776, was not the welfare of the new nation as a whole, but rather the welfare of his home state of Virginia. For Jefferson, Virginia was not simply one part of the ultimate goal of the United States, but in fact an ultimate goal in itself. It was at the local level that Jefferson knew previsions for the future freedom of his fellow Virginians had to be made.

Lessons from the Anti-Federalists

My latest column at the Daily Caller talks about the subject of localism, and suggests that those crazy anti-federalists may have actually been on to something.

The anti-federalists were some of the greatest libertarian-minded thinkers and writers in the history of our nation. They were extremely critical of attempts to unify the thirteen new states under a single Constitution, as they felt that government should be kept as close to home as possible. For example, the anonymous anti-federalist author “Montezuma” wrote an Oct. 17, 1787, article in the Independent Gazetteer titled “A Consolidated Government is a Tyranny,” which later became Antifederalist paper No. 9.
The pen names of the anti-federalists were often those of ancient Greeks or Romans who had been opposed to the expansion of their respective empires, as both these ancients and the anti-federalists noted that as nations grew, they became increasingly tyrannical and took less notice of the liberties and concerns of their individual citizens.

Read the rest here.

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