Conservatives, Go Local

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Real Clear Policy

It was a liberal Democrat, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, who issued the famous line, “All politics is local.” But it’s a truth that conservatives should reflect on today, when so many Americans have become weary of our hyper-nationalized politics, which thrives on outrage and animosity. Conservatives should embrace the quieter yet undeniably American tradition of localism.

For American conservatives, localism ought to be as fundamental as the ideals of limited government and free enterprise. It is rooted in the American principle of federalism as well as the basic attachments we feel to those places we call home. Even — perhaps especially — in an age of globalization, our closest and deepest associations tend to be local: our homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, houses of worship, the businesses we patronize, the charities we support. These are what conservatives should seek to conserve, first and foremost.

The seeds of localism were planted within the American conservative movement early on, especially in the writings of sociologists Robert Nisbet and Peter Berger and religious scholar Richard John Neuhaus. (See, especially, Nisbet’s 1953 “The Quest for Community” and Neuhaus and Berger’s 1977 “To Empower People: From State to Civil Society.”)

 

On the political front, Ronald Reagan sometimes spoke like a localist. As he put it to a Chicago audience in 1975:

I am calling for … a return to the human scale — the scale that human beings can understand and copy; the scale of the local fraternal lodge, the church congregation, the block club, the farm bureau. It is the locally owned factory, the small businessman who personally deals with his customers and stands behind his product, the farm and consumer cooperative, the town or neighborhood bank that invests in the community, the union local. In government, the human scale is the town council, the board of selectmen, and the precinct captain. It is this activity on a small human scale that creates the fabric of community, a framework for the creation of abundance and liberty.

Civil society became an area of focus for scholars and commentators across the political spectrum during and especially after the Reagan era, with some calling themselves “communitarians.” An updated version of “To Empower People” appeared in 1996, featuring entries from Catholic writer and diplomat Michael Novak, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise founder Robert Woodson, journalist and author Marvin Olasky, and philanthropy leaders William Schambra and Michael Joyce.