decentralization
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You've heard it said, "All Politics is Local..."
...And we believe this is true. And if it is true, and because it is true, the concentration of political power, of government authority and autonomy should be at the most local, the most decentralized level, the micro level.
We'll continue with an excerpt from our "Libertarian Political Program."
Decentralize:
Defer
to states, county, and municipal governments all aspects of governing
except foreign policy/national defense, facilitation of free trade and
commerce on an interstate and international level, and Constitutional
integrity.
Regionalization
of admnistration of Federal operations to achieve the best possible
balance of efficiency and subordinate autonomy.
Imagine if the town or city government had full authority to organize itself and dispatch its duties any way it sees fit. Imagine what we now call the smallest form of government, the least powerful level of government, suddenly having complete sovereignty over all matters that directly affect its own citizens. All of a sudden most of our national debates would be irrelevant or moot. If the local government decided whether or not to allow abortions within its jurisdiction, and by what criteria such would be allowed, there would be no need to fight over this on a national or even a state level.
We'd hash out abortion rights at a Town Hall meeting, not in Congress and the courts. We would serve on the Ways and Means committee ourselves. The mayoral election would have a greater impact on the things that matter in our lives than the Presidential contest.
Remember when the Supreme Court ruled that pornography is only pornography as defined by local standards? Why wasn't that made into precedent for virtually very other issue having to do with regulating individual behavior, or government behavior for that matter?
Imagine if your village had the power to vote on whether or not to contract with the Federal Government for protection, for any other service the Federal Government normally provides a local community? What if your city could determine how much, if anything, its residents would pay in income taxes, and then turn around and tell the state and Federal governments what percentage of that total amount of revenue would be passed on to them, and what uses those funds would be designated to support? Talk about turning the world upside down!
What if every village, city, town, rural district had its own sovereignty, was it's own micro-state and the "nation," what we know now as the United States, would become more like the European Union, with the micro-nations, the mini sovereign subdivisions we envision were the equivalents of the individual nation members of the EU?
We have a separate section on secession and decentralized sovereignty, though these two topics are closely related, the point here is that regardless of what shape the nation might ultimately take if liberty were enhanced and we started thinking outside of the box about how best to reduce and recreate government with liberty in mind, decentralization is a central design feature. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Centralized power does the same.