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In late June of this year, heavy rains triggered a series of flash floods inundating much of Sioux City, S.D. Two months on and residents are still struggling with cleanup and recovery. State and federal funds are welcome, but a lot of hard work remains.
Weeks after the floods, McCook Lake in North Sioux City remained surrounded by debris: rain gutters torn from houses, sodden furniture and plenty else that didn’t belong there. Rather than complain to their senator, governor or mayor, residents decided to fix the problem themselves.
“Instead of waiting for FEMA to come through for us, time is wasting, winter is approaching, the damage is being done to the environment now, so if we can get out and take care of it now, why wait?” So asked [ [link removed] ] Renae Hansen, a volunteer with the local chapter of the conservationist Izaak Walton League.
She invited people to help clean 476 acres surrounding the oxbow lake on Labor Day weekend. Before long, local businesses chipped in equipment, the Salvation Army provided meals and a platoon of volunteers turned up, vowing to remain until the area was returned to its natural state.
Stories like this happen daily in the United States, though they’re little noticed. The first person to shine a light on this uniquely American impulse was political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville. A scion of French petty nobility, he traveled across the vast new nation to discover what made it tick.
“Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations,” he wrote [ [link removed] ] in 1835 in the book for which he is most well-known, “Democracy in America [ [link removed] ].” “I have often admired the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object to the exertions of a great many men, and in getting them voluntarily to pursue it.”
Instead of begging a rich aristocrat to fix things or ask permission from the government, Americans simply team up “to give entertainments, to found establishments for education, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; and in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools.” As much as our society has changed, this spirit remains, not only in South Dakota, but in church basements and Kiwanis Clubs from Hartford to Honolulu.
As much as we celebrate “rugged individualism,” what really sets America apart is our love of ad hoc associations. This isn’t as romantic as some lone wolf righting wrongs with his six-shooter, but the fact remains.
The frontiersman and lone cowboy are key to America’s mythos, but both were quick to gather neighbors for defense or organize a posse to catch the bad guys. Man is a social creature, so it’s no wonder even antisocial pioneers fell in and out of these “little platoons,” as Edmund Burke called them. A lone mountain man gathering pelts in the Rocky Mountains wouldn’t last long without a group of other “rugged individualists” scanning the forest for hostile tribes or hungry grizzly bears.
This free collaboration among individuals remains evident in our neighborhoods and towns, but not as much when you broaden the field. When faced with a natural disaster or widespread social ill, too many instinctively shout, “The government needs to act!” This, of course, is music to a politician’s ears. They can “fix” the original problem, introduce worse problems with that “fix,” then run against the unintended effects of the legislation they once championed. It's the political equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.
For the most part, both parties agree that the government needs to act. The Democrats will suggest $750 billion for a federal Department of Action, Republicans will scoff and claim $450 billion should do the trick, and then they’ll “settle” on $650 billion. Capitol Hill needs more members who’ll ask, “Why should the government be involved in the first place?"
This libertarian instinct still appears from time to time, notably from mavericks such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). Would that more members of the limited-government party dedicated themselves to being sticks in the mud.
It’s said that during a Roman triumph, the emperor was followed by a slave muttering “memento mori,” or “remember, you are mortal.” Every Capitol Hill meeting should invite a random citizen to mutter, “Remember, this will only make things worse.”
The federal government was established to handle the few things only it could accomplish, such as national defense, diplomacy, printing currency … and it can’t even do those well. Why would anyone expect competence when it takes on local education, intimate health care decisions or building electric vehicle charging stations?
On that last point: The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act [ [link removed] ] included $7.5 billion to build 500,000 EV charging stations. As of May 2024, only eight [ [link removed] ] had been built. Elon Musk and his boys threw up two dozen of them in my neighborhood in a day or two. Besides, these failed feel-good projects distract D.C. from big-ticket items like war and peace. (Anyone look at Europe or the Middle East lately?)
From a civic perspective alone, it’s healthy for America to lean more on local associations to solve our basic problems. They’re less expensive and simply more effective. What took a group of volunteers in North Sioux City a single holiday weekend would take D.C. years—along with millions of tax dollars. These little platoons build civic engagement from the ground up—from a family to a neighborhood watch to the city’s historical museum—emanating like ripples in a pond.
“To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections,” Burke wrote in “Reflections on the French Revolution.” “It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”
The bottom-up orientation is key for a free people. The other option is top-down, where an authoritarian government redefines virtue and enforces love of dear leader. The 20th century proved that that approach often ends in cattle cars.
The restoration of America, both as a nation and an ideal, lies first in building and sustaining personal virtue. But following quickly on its heels are voluntary associations. As an added bonus, these two bedrocks of our society are self-reinforcing, creating a continuous positive cycle for both individuals and their communities. What’s more, without a vibrant constellation of local associations, there are two paths open to us: pure, atomic individualism, which is the negation of community, and compelled collectivism, which is the negation of the individual.
So, the next time a flash flood litters a lake near your house, don’t complain to some far-off politician. Gather a group of your neighbors and fix it with your little platoon. The Salvation Army might even cater it for you.
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