A Government Close Enough to Touch

Key Takeaways

As America marks its 250th birthday, I’ve been reflecting on a simple yet layered question: Why do governments exist at all? 

In 1634, on the shores of Virginia, eight shires were carved out of a young colony of roughly 5,000 settlers. The names — Accomack, Charles City, Charles River, Elizabeth City, Henrico, James City, Warwick River, Warrosquyoake — reflected both English and Native American heritages. These places, later rebranded as counties, laid the foundation for local governance across most of the nation, courthouse by courthouse. 

The greatest political minds have wrestled with this same question for centuries. John Locke argued that government is not a master imposed from above but a compact entered from below — instituted by the consent of the governed to secure life, liberty and property. When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he was drawing from Locke, among other earlier philosophers. 

As frontier Americans pushed westward, settlements were typically organized as a county — to survey boundaries, raise a courthouse, elect a sheriff, and open a ledger where a deed could be recorded and a dispute settled. 

People understood that a community cannot hold together without structure. The answer is as plain as it is old: governments exist to create an organized society. Without norms, we descend into chaos. 

But order alone is not the point. Aristotle observed in the fourth century B.C. that the political community arises so people can live but exists so we can live well. Counties maintain this spirit in three fundamental ways — to serve local people, to provide forums for citizen participation and to conduct diplomacy within county lines, at state capitals and even on the national stage. 

Self-government, including at the county level, has always carried a necessary tension: how do we balance the collective good and the rights of individuals? As outlined in Federalist No. 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Because we are not angels, that line is one every county official walks every single day. 

That is the test county leaders face — a government close enough to touch, where “the people” becomes a real person filing paperwork at a clerk’s counter, serving on a local jury, volunteering at a polling place. And yet we remain a quiet, often misunderstood level of government. 

As Desmond Tutu’s father taught him, we must not raise our voice but improve our argument. At 250 years, America’s promise of self-government is still being tested, as it always has been, at the county level. 

Our charge now is to tell the county story. To our federal, state, local and tribal partners, so they govern with us, not around us. To the everyday citizen who benefits from our daily work, without always seeing it. Above all, to our youth, who will inherit this experiment in self-government and must be ready to carry it forward.