"The Lure of Subsidiarity" --Prof. Arkes in The Catholic Thing

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By The James Wilson Institute • Posted on Jun 14 2016

In The Catholic Thing, Prof. Arkes writes about the principle of subsidiarity gone wrong: when it prevents the nation as a whole from affirming fundamental moral principles that apply to all times, and to all places. Subsidiarity ought not be an empty political structure which does recognize the foundations of human nature which transcend it. Some excerpts: "With some earlier columns of mine, readers were writing in to make the pitch again for 'subsidiarity,' and that remedy of sorts has been offered anew by Yuval Levin in his new book, The Fractured Republic. Our culture is so split and fragmented now, he argues, that the best prospect may be found in lives led in distinct local enclaves, free to cultivate their own character." "But 'subsidiarity' simply offers another device to find some shelter from the moral war. And for the same reason it will work no better than the others. At no time was the insularity of local enclaves stronger than at the time of our Founding, and yet it became clear during the Constitutional Convention that this new government would need the authority to intervene in those local enclaves."

"The scheme of subsidiarity covered the most dramatic diversity of moral arrangements: the accommodation with slavery. Stephen Douglas sung the praises of the system in his debates with Abraham Lincoln as he savored the delicious variety on offer: there were cranberries in Indiana, oysters in Virginia, and in certain parts of the South. . .slave labor. Not in Illinois, where his people had little taste for that sort of thing, but who was to judge? Lincoln remarked that Douglas “looks upon [slavery] as being an exceedingly little thing – only equal to the question of the cranberry laws of Indiana,” because it was “something having no moral question in it.” But then the Mormons in Utah brought polygamy. Ah, that was an entirely different matter, and for that, Douglas was willing to send in the army! For that, you see, mattered. That was morally serious." Read the whole column here.