States Rights? Power to the Neighborhoods!

Here is an excellent review by Bill Kaufman of a book about Jefferson's last years by Alan Crawford. (Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson, Alan Pell Crawford, Random House, 312 pages )

“...Crawford’s Jefferson speaks to the current crisis in his late-life responses to the steady growth of the central state and the resultant erosion of the political role of the local citizen. Crawford emphasizes, as so few writers on Jefferson have done, the “ward republics,” Jefferson’s radical yet practical plan for decentralizing government. His “single most profound contribution to American political thought,” in Crawford’s phrase, was explicated in a series of letters in 1814-16. He proposed that almost all governmental powers devolve to “ward republics,” five or six miles square, which the country could rely upon for “the eternal preservation of its Republican principles.” Crawford abhors the enlistment of historical figures in present-day crusades, but Jefferson’s ward-republic idea, though firmly set in a place and time, offers us a way out of Empire—a path of refreshment, a revitalizing end to our torpid condition...”

The “gradation of authorities,” in Jefferson’s phrase, parallels the Catholic concept of subsidiarity.

See the review here at The American Conservative.