Huh? Subsidiarity? What’s that? Well, its this:
The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co- ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.”
Boiled down, what is meant is that you should leave things to be done on the lowest social level possible. We are burdened – in government and business – with behemoth organizations which simply grind up society. Can a bureaucrat in DC really tell what sort of assistance is needed in Omaha? Not at all – but the bureaucrat’s rules dictate what the people of Omaha will have to do, regardless of how absurd, expensive or counter-productive it is.
Similarly, can a CEO based in New York City really tell what the business needs are in Boise? Not a chance – but down will flow the dictates and the people in Boise will try to implement a business plan drawn up by people who have never been within 500 miles of the place. It just doesn’t work.
Remember, it was the considered decisions of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the United States Treasury which got us in to our current mess. Nothing small in any of that – nothing which was actually in touch with the day to day needs of average people. Its not surprising it failed – it is surprising that it didn’t fail, sooner.
I bring this up because Deal Hudson over at Inside Catholic writes up how Governor Christie of New Jersey is implementing governing ideas based upon subsidiarity:
…At a time when most prominent Catholic politicians — Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and John Kerry — have advocated federal government solutions to problems like health care, Gov. Christie is pushing in the opposite direction by releasing a New Jersey Privatization Task Force Report.
In the 57-page report, the Task Force proposes privatizing the state’s motor vehicle inspections, housing construction inspections, turnpike toll booths, state parks, psychiatric hospitals, as well as contracting for highway maintenance work, and outsourcing worker’s compensation claims and all pension, payroll, and benefit payments systems…
That is subsidiarity with teeth. The concept here is not, as our liberals would say, that we’re abandoning the poor. They want to believe that because they can’t imagine a world without a government bureaucrat telling them what to do – but we imagine a world in which people take care of themselves and their neighbors. Which is the sort of world we used to have, before we started first creating monster-sized corporations, then created a double-monster-sized government to be the senior partner of a two-headed, society-eating dragon.
A new – or, more accurately, a revived – America must come of this crisis. As with all problems, it is moral – theological – at its base. What sort of society do we want? Do we want to be free men and women who look after each other? Or do we wish to be slaves – slaves to the super-State using the super-Corporation as its enforcer? I choose to be free – and I am delighted that in people like Governor Christie, we’re seeing at least some in leadership start to get it.
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