| Some problems are better handled by states and municipalities, by churches and charitable organizations, by family and friends. Some may become federal issues. Not everything is amenable to government action, and there are often unintended consequences. Reflexively turning to the federal government to solve one's problems is dopey. It is a big country with a lot of people, and most of them have responsibility to pull their own weight and solve their own problems, individually or in their families or in their communities. That is not "elitist Republican conservatism", that is the American culture in which most of us were raised, of immigrants who wanted a chance to make a better life for themselves and their descendants, of pioneers who pushed West and faced all kinds of hazards to homestead, of unionists who took it upon themselves to organize for better wages and conditions, of mutual aid societies that would help the immigrant with citizenship studies and find him a flat, of churches that became the center of community life in many a small town, of schools built by cities and counties and states to take care of the needs of children, of land grant universities and teacher's colleges....The federal government helped in some of this, to be sure, but it was not the major agent carrying history forward.......... |
