Title: The Case for Local Government | RealClearPolicy
Headings: The Case for Local Government
The Case for Local Government
By Michael Hendrix
March 04, 2019

Content: Cities and towns have always animated the American project, their local governments acting as the central nervous system of the body politic. Participation in matters of shared consequence can reinforce a sense of the common good, laying the foundation for communities in which citizens share the tasks of maintaining and improving the places where they live. Without functioning local governments, the larger political community is in danger of heart failure. Perhaps the greatest challenge to the American project today is apathy — the sense that no one in power listens to us or is trustworthy. Social media and other technologies intensify rather than quell these anxieties. Liberating ourselves from the local has not made us freer but rather placed us under the authority of a seemingly unaccountable central government along with an increasingly concentrated economy. It is time we believed again in the power of local — local solutions, local opportunities, and local democracy. Our life together in community, from which local governments are born, should be the building blocks of the American project. Michael Hendrix is director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute. Comment
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