Civitas No. 4
On Federalism Properly Understood, and the Myth of Local Innocence
To The People of the United States:
Federalism was not devised as a means of distributing blame, but as a means of multiplying accountability. Its purpose was not to ensure that some authority might always be accused while others escaped notice, but to ensure that power, wherever it resided, would remain visible, contestable, and restrained. When federalism is reduced to a rhetorical device -- invoked to condemn distant institutions while excusing nearby ones -- it ceases to serve its constitutional function.
The original design of the American system did not presume that any level of government would be naturally virtuous. It presumed the opposite. Power was divided not because the states were trusted more than the national government, nor because local officials were thought more benign than federal ones, but because authority, when fragmented, is harder to conceal and easier to challenge. Federalism was intended to create many points of resistance, not sanctuaries of innocence.
Yet over time, this understanding has eroded. Dissatisfaction with national institutions has led many to treat state and local governments as presumptive remedies rather than objects of scrutiny. This reflex is understandable, but it is mistaken. States are no less capable of consolidation than the federal government, and in some respects are more efficient at it. Their proximity to The People, while valuable, also renders their excesses more familiar -- and therefore more easily overlooked.
State governments increasingly mirror the tendencies often condemned at the national level. Legislative authority is delegated to administrative bodies; executive discretion expands through regulation and emergency; judicial interpretation reshapes law beyond its text. These developments are not imposed from without. They are adopted locally, justified locally, and tolerated locally. To ignore them is not federalism; it is abdication.
Local governments, closer still to daily life, present an even sharper challenge. Their powers are immediate, their decisions tangible, and their effects often irreversible. Zoning rules determine the use of property; regulatory boards shape livelihoods; prosecutors and courts exercise discretion that can alter lives with little fanfare. Yet these authorities are often the least examined, shielded by familiarity and the assumption that what is local must be accountable.
This assumption is false. Proximity does not guarantee scrutiny. It often diminishes it. Where officials are neighbors, criticism becomes uncomfortable; where institutions are small, their reach is underestimated. The result is not tyranny in the grand sense, but a steady accumulation of unexamined authority exercised beyond meaningful review.
Federalism fails when scrutiny is selective. A people who demand restraint from Washington while ignoring consolidation in their own states, counties, and cities have misunderstood the nature of the system they inherited. Liberty is not preserved by shifting trust from one level of government to another. It is preserved by withholding uncritical trust from all of them.
The habit of blaming distant power while excusing nearby authority is more than incomplete; it is self-defeating. It teaches citizens to look outward for the source of every grievance and inward only rarely. Over time, this erodes the very capacity for self-government that federalism was meant to protect.
Properly understood, federalism imposes a discipline on The People themselves. It requires attentiveness at every level, resistance to convenience, and a willingness to question authority even when it is familiar. It does not permit the luxury of focusing outrage where it is easiest, while neglecting the places where responsibility is closest.
The preservation of liberty demands a comprehensive vigilance. National power must be restrained; so must state power; so must local power. To exempt any one of these from examination is to misunderstand the system entirely. A republic cannot remain free if it practices accountability only at a distance.
Federalism was designed to ensure that power would always have somewhere to answer. When that design is honored selectively, it fails universally.
Civitas Americana