From the Center for Opportunity Urbanism
Local Govt. Control: The Ignored Campaign Issue
By Joel Kotkin…
Excerpts:
In a new paper, “Our Town: Restoring Localism,” my colleague Wendell Cox and I argue that centralization should not be regarded as a partisan issue. Some progressives, particularly in academia, assert that support for localized decision-making rests “not in facts but rather in ideology and politics.” Some also link any devolutionary agenda to the crimes committed in the name of “states’ rights,” most notably slavery and the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow laws.
Sadly, the closer one gets to the Washington honey pot, the more that progressive passion for localism tends to fade. Some liberals embrace nothing short of an administrative dictatorship in pursuit of their policy agendas. Last year, a writer in the Atlantic actually called for the creation of a “technocracy” to determine energy, economic and land-use policies throughout the world. This regime would impose such unpopular notions as energy austerity on an already fading middle class, limiting mundane pleasures like cheap air travel, cars, freeways, suburbs and single-family housing.
We need to forge a new path that empowers the grassroots economy and polity, and respects the diversity of contemporary America. We can’t expect that this movement will draw much interest from Washington institutions, which gorge on centralization, but it could be propelled by local communities and people who still believe in the decentralized democracy envisioned by the Founders.
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