The founders copied some ideas from ancient Israel, knowing that God was a good resource to understand natural laws related to government.
How do we restore local power and true local government today?
Some places on the east coast still see a remnant of this model with the “ward system”. For example, in 2012 Bethlehem, NY (a town of about 10,000) discussed a proposal to subdivide the town into wards. Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a ward system was based on this ancient Abrahamic pattern of very small and very local, self-governing groups.
Today we do not have have to become exact copy cats of any ancient system in all details, but we do need to learn from history and understand the principles of nature’s laws that have given freedom in varying degrees to people for thousands of years.
We need to make government more local than ever before.
Read up on the local committee principle that our founding fathers taught us here.
Get a copy of the American Committee Association committee guidebook here.
Become a monthly supporter of Defending Utah and the ACA to either support others following this path or become mentored yourself here.
5 Responses
Yes, we will live again in groups of ten, hundreds, thousands when the Political Kingdom of God is fully setup.
https://millennialnorthstar.info/will-gods-kingdom-come/
Thanks for sharing the article. God’s kingdom must come as all Christians are taught in Christ’s prayer, but it must be based in liberty for all mankind. I differ on some of the details in your article, and also I do have a copy of the KOG constitution, which ultimately should not be interpreted as something to follow in a letter-of-the-law manner. Eternal principles and reasoning, governing by counsel, will always be paramount over the letter of the law in a God’s kingdom or in any free society at all. The key mistake most people miss when studying this subject is they try to find some old nugget of written instruction that we can follow to this path. But from an LDS view, moving forward must come in recognizing that Joseph was just doing his best, learning from failure and trying again, over and over, and so we should follow his example on trying to implement principles and learning as we go. But not get caught up in the exact details, as if every thing he (or anybody else) did was an exact commandment of heaven that we have to get back to. We should follow his counsel to be taught “correct principles” and then “govern ourselves”. Principles can be implemented a variety of ways according to circumstance of local communities and associations of communities. There will be no top down control in any system, it will be bottom up. This is the founding father’s vision as much as Joseph Smith’s vision.
And yet, PRIOR to Moses’ Fraternal order/system, there was a Patriarchal order. Does the lesser preside over the greater? MUST EVERYONE PARTICIPATE IN THE COMMUNITY’S DESIRES? OR, CAN THEY OPT OUT?
“I don’t want a public library” – either pay to build it, pay to service its debt, or maintain it by paying employees. Let those who want it freely join together to build it and pay to maintain it. Otherwise, I’m in servitude to the masses.
Minimalist government. US Constitution items which are a compromise for COMMON DEFENSE.
Delayed response to this comment. But your point is exactly what I mean from my other comment, that when we’re guided by principles and not hardened “rules of man” but instead “principles of heaven” (which never change, but how we implement them can change with circumstance), it will look different in different communities according to desires and circumstances of the local people.
Decentralization is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I love that others are thinking along these lines by identifying proven patterns. I have Mosiah and Judges on my short list for review.