Municipal Autonomy Quotes

I believe in the Italy of municipalities, of the Renaissance, not in Mussolini's centralization.

Switzerland is the perfect place where you have volatility at a municipal level that nothing up top - small units competing with each other.

The freedom of the city is not negotiable. We cannot negotiate with those who say, 'What's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable.'

Local assemblies of the people constitute the strength of free nations. Municipal institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science: they bring it within the people's reach, and teach them how to use and enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty.

Perhaps democracy should be begun at the local level first. America was many local democracies before democracy came to the national level.

Towns were the nursery of freedom.

Local self-government…is the life-blood of liberty.

I have always insisted on the need for local self-government for Russia, but I never opposed this model to Western democracy. On the contrary, I have tried to convince my fellow citizens by citing the examples of highly effective local self-government systems in Switzerland and New England, both of which I saw first-hand.

I find it perfectly consistent for libertarians to operate on the municipal or county level, where they are close to the people and where they may have a party or a federation that is made up of the social institutions, the residual social institutions that still remain, over and beyond what the State has managed to preempt and absorb.