By: Mike Maharrey
If you have a car that’s up on blocks without any wheels and a rusted out engine, you’re not going to get it running by switching out drivers.
And yet this is the strategy most people use when it comes to politics. They focus all of their time, energy, and money on getting the “right people” elected to go to D.C.
And nothing ever changes.
Between you and me, I suspect there is no such thing as the “right people.” Not when it comes to liberty. I mean, there are obviously some people who are better than others. But the right people? I doubt it. Not in the world of national politics.
The real problem is even the best people can’t fix a system that is as hopelessly broken as the federal government. It is so far from the Constitutional system the founding generation established, I doubt any of the founding fathers would even recognize it.
The bottom line is Washington D.C. is never going to limit the power of Washington D.C. I don’t care who you send there. Just like a new driver isn’t going to fix our broken down car.
This is why I focus my energy on state and local solutions. We need other power centers to undermine overreaching federal authority. States, and in some cases even localities, are those power centers.
Don’t get me wrong. State and local governments are broken too. But you can have more impact within those smaller spheres. My work at that Tenth Amendment Center has proved that. And when it comes to issue-oriented politics, we’ve had successes in states as different as Oklahoma and California.
I believe centralized authority is the biggest threat to liberty. That means decentralization is the biggest hope. We’re certainly not getting anywhere changing out drivers in the broken-down car.