How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

by Ben Shapiro

Finally, the Constitution was designed in the belief that local governments govern best, since they are closest to their constituents. The national government would have the ability to protect individual rights of citizens against the gravest state usurpations—this, for example, was the intent of the Article IV restrictions against states abusing the “privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states,”54 as well as the grant of federal power to “guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.” But the locus of government power would reside at the local level. As Madison pointed out in Federalist No. 10, “The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party.”55