Love Thy Neighbor or Leviathan

The Civil War is still with us. It has just changed and we don't recognize where it came from and what needs to be done to reduce the divisions in society. Up until industrialization, most Americans were farmers (including slaves) or in occupations related to farming (tradespeople, textiles, etc). With the advent of tools, techniques, and technology, society was able to get ahead of the curve of fighting for daily food.

Because in pre-Civil War America, people had their hands full with mere survival, politics was mostly local. We didn't have the means or the time to create vast structures to develop public policy. Federal Powers were directly enumerated. There were disputes between the Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonians on how powerful the Federal branch of the government should be. Yet, over time, local government was the responsible agent for most of the laws of the land. But, slavery posed a question of jurisdiction that tore at the fabric of civil society. What if you neighbor, bordering state, member of the Union, oppressed the rights of one group of people (those of African descent), for the benefit of another (the white Southern aristocracy)? We should also not fail to mention the legal oppression of the Irish and Italian and Eastern European immigrant, the Chinese, Native Peoples.

How local should the politics be then? Or, how about the cadre of corruption when men with means create unjust structures that are local but wicked such as land use policy, oppressive and unjust use of police, etc? Or denied service due to the argument that it is my property and I will do with it what I want, while still relying on the arm of the state to enforce the rights to your property? Sounds selective and it was. It is all fine and good to say that the local citizenry should rise up, but just social protests, perhaps even the use of violence, is viewed quite differently depending which side of the pitchfork you are on. Freedom fighter or seditionist?

The Federal government grew to its monstrous size to impose a universal system on all the states that intended to create a level playing field. The Federal government, and its proponents advocating programs like the Great Society, also sought to remediate past injustices and discrimination, reasoning that if the state had been used as a means of oppression, it could also play the opposite role of benevolence. So, what happened then was that many things of day to day to life were now were politicized. Hardly anything is not touched directly by government these days. Our whole system has to go through the Washington sausage-maker. And it is grinding our nation to a halt and soon we are to cut not only to the bone but through the bone. The Federal government has taken on too much responsibility, and men being men, the complexity and costs of the system are killing us, while the respective political parties are arguing who gets to hold the levers of power while we crash and burn.

The solution? Love your neighbor as yourself. We should not need the Federal government powers to enforce what God has commanded. God has said it. That should be enough.