Tuesday, September 06, 2005
The Interface Between Reality and Principle
Evangelical Outpost is pretty upset at conservatives for, in his opinion, abandoning their principles, and not participating in local government, thus leading to many of the failures seen in NOLA.
Let's say we took Joe up on his idea here, the result would be to win the battle but lose the war. Yes, local government would function better in this instance, but in the meantime, we'd be losing the bigger fights in Washington, rendering those able local officials less and less able to do what they do best.
And do you really think anyone would fall for that last minute party switch gag?
Finally, we cannot let Louisiana with its long history of inept and corrupt local politics color our view of local politics in general. Many good and able national politicians have done their time in local government. Some of the most prominent were at their best in local government -- Richard Lugar, for example, was a great mayor of Indidnapolis, while he has been only a mediocre Senator with, at best, moments of effectiveness.
Finally, try to get elected on a local level as a conservative -- for any party.
I think Joe is letting his rightly placed and felt passion override his political judgement in this circumstance.
But mayor's offices, city councils, and state legislatures all join the "little platoons" that serve as our first line of defense when natural or man-made disasters strike. So why then are we not working to put our best and brightest into these offices? Why do push them to take jobs as Senatorial aides rather than as state senators? Why do we lead them to roles as assistants to assistant directors in the Department of Education rather than as leaders on county school boards? Why do we put our rhetoric behind the local and yet but our faith in the federal?The thing about a principle is you have to have a battlefield on which to fight for it, and unforutnately, through no fault of conservatives, local government is not that battlefield. Liberal action on the federal level has rendered local government largely ceremonial. Liberal action has made Washington the battleground - so that is where our best and our brightest are going to go.
If we expect to be taken seriously, conservatives must start supporting the principles we claim we believe. One way that we could begin is by "subsidizing" subsidiarity, by using our resources to promote our intellectual and political leaders at the state and local levels of governance.
Imagine if conservatives had identified a true leader ? whether a Democrat or Republican - and supported them in the New Orleans mayoral race. Imagine if such a candidate had won instead of Nagin, a self-financed Republican who switched party registration to the Democratic Party days before filing for his candidacy. Imagine if we had supported a candidate who understood the responsibility of the chief elected official in a city was to look after the safety of his fellow citizens. Would there have been fewer deaths? We'll never know. Perhaps in the future, though, we?ll start acting like we claim to believe. And then maybe next time disaster strikes we won?t even have to wonder.
Let's say we took Joe up on his idea here, the result would be to win the battle but lose the war. Yes, local government would function better in this instance, but in the meantime, we'd be losing the bigger fights in Washington, rendering those able local officials less and less able to do what they do best.
And do you really think anyone would fall for that last minute party switch gag?
Finally, we cannot let Louisiana with its long history of inept and corrupt local politics color our view of local politics in general. Many good and able national politicians have done their time in local government. Some of the most prominent were at their best in local government -- Richard Lugar, for example, was a great mayor of Indidnapolis, while he has been only a mediocre Senator with, at best, moments of effectiveness.
Finally, try to get elected on a local level as a conservative -- for any party.
I think Joe is letting his rightly placed and felt passion override his political judgement in this circumstance.
