Uncle Sam Is Not Your Neighbor
Our federal government has essential but limited duties and authorities. In its legitimate spheres of responsibility, Uncle Sam ought to act. But outside those areas, he should not.
Unfortunately, it is not always easy to define those borders. As is the case whenever someone must determine, absent perfect information, what is “in” and what is “out,” there will be Type I and Type II errors—mistakenly labeling an “out” as an “in” and an “in” as an “out.” In governing, progressives typically make the false-positive mistake, identifying areas for the federal government to act where it should not. American conservatives can be guilty of the false-negative mistake, arguing that Uncle Sam should stand down when he ought to stand up.
Thankfully, we have been handed down rules of thumb for helping us understand when Washington should engage. These guides are always important because central authorities tend to be voracious: without a strict diet, they will consume and consume and grow and grow. But they are especially important in moments like these, when the nation faces big challenges, and the idea of resorting to swift, certain federal action becomes enticing.
A good place to start is the Constitution. The federal government has enumerated powers, and the Tenth Amendment reserves the remainder for states and the units they create. From the beginning, then, Washington was legally constrained. But we also have informal rules, namely American traditions of governing related to democratic-republicanism, localism, civil society, and pluralism. In combination, these continuously remind us that America is an extraordinarily diverse, continental nation conceived in liberty; as such, self-rule, individual and community agency, and variation are vital. Accordingly, we decentralize power to an array of close-to-home governmental and nongovernmental bodies.
We are also guided by moral principles. For example, natural rights generally constrain the state. Subsidiarity assigns responsibilities and authorities to different entities within society, with a clear preference for deferring to those closest to the action and inhibiting the consolidation of power. Solidarity reflects humans’ need for community and our obligations to one another, especially those nearby.
There are also hard-learned lessons like those related to the dangers of technocracy and “seeing like a state.” These teach us that those with technical “expertise” in centralized positions of power are seldom as wise as they believe, never possess enough information to act with sufficient prudence and agility, unavoidably underappreciate local conditions and customs, and typically cause a rash of unintended negative consequences.
These rules of thumb don’t tell us exactly what to do with regard to every policy particular. But they do give us direction, and they do forecast the costs of centralization. They warn us that if we give Uncle Sam too much power, we run the risk of enervating mediating bodies and attenuating local bonds; undermining local democracy and differentiation; empowering distant, impersonal, ignorant but self-certain authorities; and distorting individual and community behavior.
***
We are, prayerfully, on the tail end of an era when the federal government regularly responded poorly when called upon—Katrina, the financial crisis, the pandemic. We are also in the midst of an era when some of our most serious national challenges (related to immigration and China, for instance) can only be meaningfully addressed by the federal government. As a result, some have begun to reason that we simply need a more confident and muscular Uncle Sam—he needs to act more and needs the power to exert his will when he does so. Relatedly, some seem to have set as their default position “increase federal action” when presented with a pressing problem, whether it’s Big Tech, out-of-work men, deaths of despair, declining fertility, or any of an array of other social difficulties.
Indeed, our recent uptick in nationalist energy—like most waves of nationalism here and abroad—reflects this exaggerated sense of what role the central government ought to play in citizens’ lives. That is, bouts of heightened nationalism are typically not a mistake of kind but a mistake of degree. It is right to love and be loyal to your nation and to want and expect it to accomplish important things. But it is wrong to orient our thinking around or hand too much power to the distant, centralized state. This is how conservative nationalism has ended up reproducing progressivism’s false-positive error: identifying too many tasks for Uncle Sam.
The principles of governing that have traditionally led the right to decentralize power should animate our humane-economy agenda. We need to begin with place, solidarity, tradition, variation, civil society, republicanism, and federalism. We need public policies that strengthen connections among citizens and fidelity to community. We need state action that distributes, not consolidates, power and that fortifies and energizes close-to-home institutions.
We must never forget that federal handouts aren’t generous; they are enervating. A distant technocrat who relies on Bureau of Labor Statistics data and econometric models doesn’t know your community. A federal bureaucracy that knows you only by your Social Security number cannot truly care for you and your family. Politics that constantly draws our attention to Washington also pulls us away from our local institutions.
Any policy agenda designed to foster a humane economy must be built on the great communitarian lesson: institutions remain strong only to the extent that they have meaningful work to do. We sap the energy and formative capacities of the organizations that care about us, that give us meaning, and that provide us security when we take away their purposes and efficacy. So more initiative, funding, and planning from Washington isn’t how we strengthen the social fabric; it’s how we weaken it.
It is time to turn our attention to state and local leaders—governors, mayors, legislators, town councils, school boards, philanthropists, and faith- and community-based organizations. They need to develop great schools, retrain workers, preserve existing jobs and create new ones, provide social services, and foster the creation of new local institutions. These are things Uncle Sam cannot do well. To the extent he is involved, his involvement should always be geared toward catalyzing or temporarily capacitating closer-to-home leaders.
Yes, returning to the core principles of American-conservative governing will stop Uncle Sam from accepting many of the jobs he is currently being offered. But it will also demand more action from other entities, which is precisely what we need: neighborhoods, foundations, nonprofits, churches, towns, cities, regions, and states need to rebuild the muscles that have atrophied from disuse.
______________________
Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in Intercollegiate Studies Institute