The contrarian viewpoint: all power should be as local as possible, because:
- it permits a wider array of personal preferences in both the law and law enforcement;
- it means that mistakes in the law, and thus damage done by it, are localized and thus smaller;
- it permits localities to be breeding grounds for policies to see how they work;
- it runs against the USian personality, in which there is a deeply independent streak and which is not so government-oriented as most of the nations of the world;
- although my state rep [was] an S.O.B., at least he's local enough that I can figure that out. For higher offices the pols are less visible and less accessible.
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