First Thoughts About Localism
Localism is not an “ism” in the same way as are conservatism, liberalism, nationalism, socialism, and the like. One reason I would argue that this is the case is because it is simply the normal human way of life. It is the sort of thing that would have been odd to give it a name in times past. The seeds of such a view go all the way back to the Garden.
God made the image of God irreducibly local.
Every now and then an individual or group of individuals is vaulted into a position of more reach. However, by and large, we are creatures on a small parcel of land with a few feet in our wingspan, and a handful of people under our care. When we busy ourselves with more than that, it is either a legitimate overflow of God’s blessing, or (what is more often the case) a bout of delusion, covetousness, being a busy-body, or worse yet a tyrant.
The “smaller world” that modern technology has afforded, in its speed of travel and even faster rates of communication, has exacerbated these anti-realities. The power of the locale has been rendered unintelligible at just the moment when it holds out for us so many remedies.
Localism as a political philosophy—or, at least, as part of one’s overall political philosophy—is a foreign concept to Americans in the postwar generations. That means it is now foreign to anyone still living. People will cite exceptions, and those exceptions will usually relate to homesteading, homeschooling, or being a part of such a vibrant local church that just about everything is shared as a Christian community. Such things do exist, and praise God for that! However I am speaking more about an explicit political philosophy that seeks to address or else to explain those problems that are of a national and international variety.
Sketching out such a philosophy would be a monumental task, even at an introductory level. I would like to use this space to instead stir the thoughts of the reader, by way of preparation for such a philosophy, to see that it is even a positive vision to begin with rather than some kind of last ditch retreat.
The Local Void
Consider the following eight metrics by which we might measure a lack of local health:
1. Most Red-State Americans do not know any of their immediate neighbors in any substantive way.
2. Most of the same are not committed members of a local church.
3. Most of the same are addicted to processed food, impulse or status shopping, and watching sports or other mindless entertainment.
4. Most of the same still tend to see political crises in an atomistic fashion (i.e. not as deliberate phases, strategies in the same war of the centralized State against the basic human rights of people in locales).
5. Most of the same know neither the doctrine of the lesser magistrate, nor of interposition of that magistrate.
6. Most of the same do not know who their sheriff is, or at least have not voted on the basis of interposition.
7. Most local churches are led by functional Gnostics and pietists (and most who see this choose to check out or blend in rather than support those who do the opposite).
8. Most smaller local churches are too territorial to band together to form schools and other economic, health care, and charity co-ops.
Other similar metrics could be cited. In the interest of getting started, I will limit things to these eight. In order to see why they make the difference that they do, simply flip each of these eight coins over and think about what things would look like if their opposites were true.
Now right away we will run into the need for a paradigm shift in order to make the first step in this thought experiment. When I say “the difference” that such and such would make, we have already been programmed, for several generations now, to think in terms alien to the way God designed human beings.
In other words, we have in our minds “the difference” it would make to some all-or-nothing, now-or-never, conception of “the nation” or “the international community.” But I really must ask: Is that really where the difference God has designed us to make rests? And what exactly are those entities you speak of? What do we mean by “the nation,” never mind that grander-sounding thing about the global village?
Even to the degree that we can trace out legitimate civic relationships between our minds and action on the one hand, and a distant capital such as Washington D. C. on the other—even granting such an account, the fact remains that the aforementioned “difference” was lost on us. We couldn’t hear a thing. We were too busy processing that question through the only categories that staring into screens have left us with. That is, we could only define “difference” in global and frankly utopian terms. That said, let us flip the eight coins over in the more down-to-earth way I am suggesting.
The Local Turnaround
Now consider a community, if even just one—and, if it helps, let us define that community as even a dozen or more individuals or families get things started. Imagine such where:
1. Most do know a few of their immediate neighbors on a first-name basis and on friendly terms.
2. Most are committed members of a local church.
3. Most eat locally grown and traded food, live within their means, and spend leisure time with family and friends.
4. Most begin to see political crises as all of one cloth: whole ideologies, whole regimes, with whole agendas (and those from sinful natures).
5. Most become familiar with the doctrine of the lesser magistrate, and of interposition of that magistrate.
6. Most vote for the sheriff as that lesser magistrate, involving themselves in the process of raising up only such public servants.
7. Most local churches are teaching regularly on the civil use of the law, as well as concentrated ethics and civics classes, with the design that at least some in their midst will run for local offices to begin weaning off from the globalist occupying regime.
8. Most smaller local churches get together to form low-cost schools to empty out the government schools, markets of as many goods and services as possible, health care clinics, and food pantries, each of which can expand with expertise and resources.
This does not even begin to speak of the nuts and bolts of Christians running for local offices, such as city council, mayor, and state representatives. And in case anyone is wondering, true, there is no ninth point above specific to family reformation. The reason is because very likely all parties who are not self-consciously statist in their ideology will agree that stronger families are a Christian priority and a net good for society as a whole.
A localist civic life thus conceived would have several net effects: 1. Public witness improvement, 2. Increased evangelism opportunities, 3. Greater unity among the churches, 4. A total and realistic civic life that does not depend on living vicariously through far away famous persons who either cannot or will not deliver on their promises, and 5. Strengthened rudimentary pieces for the “if and when” scenarios that one more regularly tends to think about when the subject turns to “disunion” or “secession.” The tiresome objections that such things are pie-in-the-sky (or even equivalent to calls for civil war or sedition) are as fallacious as they are slanderous, but the one that concerns us here has to do with what we should consider to be the healthier psychological and social outlook.
Commitment to localism does not mean that it is morally wrong to vote for the state governor, or even the U. S. President. Outcomes there may indeed buy some useful time. It does mean, however, growing up to the realization that governments that have already been centralized in their basic bureaucratic orientation and their agencies of violent force are not the sort of things that can be turned back around by democratic means. They will either be conquered by a foreign power, dissolved by a series of economic, cultural, or other nature-based destabilizing events, or else “check-mated” by growing numbers of locales that have become self-sufficient, thereby tipping the balance of incentives away from their use of force against those locales so that they are able to achieve peaceful independence.
This is the way the world works. Staying in the house to petition one’s abuser and somehow “taking back” the house is not the way the world works—all the more so when abusers begin to outnumber the abused.
Localism is the political philosophy not only for adults, but for mature Christians, who trust in God’s providence to work out the big picture and who act responsibly in ways that really are meaningful, yet, if they do not cause the most ideal temporal effects, are the very things that we have been given to do by God anyway.
In fact the shoe is on the other foot on the question of political idolatry. It is localism that is the creational norm. It is all of the opposites that are coveteous grasping at a “whole-world” vision that we were never meant to obsess over. Simply review those eight points and ask: Is there anything morally wrong with those activities? Is there anything inherently hateful or divisive about any of those activities? I ask because such will be the charges, and so it is always wise to come back to the ABCs of localism and put the burden of proof back where it belongs—on the critics of the normal, local way that God designed the moral actor in this real world.
