Subsidiarity

This is an interesting statement by the mayor of Ann Arbor, Michigan:

"The federal government has turned their back on many of these people. So has the state government. We are the government of last resort for these people."

This is very telling of one of the foundational problems facing this country today: we lack a proper understanding of the role of intermediate communities. It was heard in the cries from New Orleans, but the Ann Arbor Mayor sums it up nicely.

The solution is subsidiarity. The principle of subsidiarity is addressed in several encyclicals, including Centesimus Annus (paragraph 48):

[T]he principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.

For those scared of anything based on Catholic philosophy, just think of subsidiarity as federalism that can not be tainted by judicial activism (that's very oversimplified, but it will do for now).

Allowing lower ordered communities to handle problems will foster better solutions, because problems are addressed by those closest in proximity to them. This does not mean that the federal government does not have an important and essential role in government, it just means we don't turn to the feds first if the problem can be handled locally.

This would be a radical departure from the system we have in place today. It demands a higher amount of responsibility from each individual and each intermediate community. This post is going to a bit elusive--advocating for subsidiarity without addressing the logistics of implementing it (I'll save that for another day--it's not unreasonable). For now, it is enough to at least consider this approach to governement as a viable option to a federal superpower in D.C. that controls all.