Subsidiarty man is arrested

In a posting March 15th I asked ‘Is Big Brother Back’? Over the years I have noticed that big government and big business is taking away more and more of the decisions and rights of local government and individuals. It has become very evident in Wisconsin after the Republican take over when now state government wants to dictate every little thing, where a local police or fire fighter can or cannot live, what workers can collective bargain and who cannot, who can vote, what goes on in local schools and health centers, who can purchase a gun.

Over the years I have come across a word “subsidiarty”, which is a word to me representing the opposite of this Big Government/Business movement.

Not many dictionaries have the word listed and, although it is part of Catholic Social teaching it is rarely mentioned in Church, religious education or conversation.

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. In political terms it means bottom up government and that it is local and regional government that knows best the needs of their citizen. Economically it is part of what is called Distributism which means that the ‘means of production’ should be kept as local as possible. In the words of Chesterton’s: “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” For Mahatma Gandhi, teacher of nonviolence it was called “Swadeshi”, the use and service of our immediate surroundings over those more remote or foreign.

In Europe the word is used often in the European Union documents but its meaning is kept away from persons as it is here in the USA. But in Europe there is a man, Richard Medic, who by day is a mild mannered spokesman for the Assembly of European Regions, but whose alter-ego has been making the news. As Subsidiarity Man, he has founded a movement to have the word subsidiarity included in all the world’s dictionaries. The slogan of the movement is, “Subsidiarity is a word”. You can watch video’s about the adventures of Subsidiarty Man and the “Subsidiarty is a word” campaign at Subsidiarty man arrested for a word” and Subsidiarity Man jumps from bridge to set world record!.

The spell checker on Microsoft Word does not recognize the word subsidiarty but ‘subsidiarty is a word’ and more dangerously a movement whose time has come.

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