Actually, I'll stand behind that, at least conceptually, David.  Too much power away from local government and instead ceded to the national level almost invariably leads to a kind of tyranny.  I lived that in 1999 under Hugo Chavez.  It was a disaster far worse than anything ever seen here in the United States.   Having written that, I did see the clarification later, which showed that Eric had something a bit different in mind.  And I did acknowledge that.  To me, it really wasn't clear from the original post.  And now, I was not intending to be comical nor do I see it as that.  Not the end of the world if you do.  We don't need perfect agreement on all issues to get along as human beings.