If economist Friedrich Hayek taught us to as who ought to decide, and Abraham Lincoln taught us to as to what end, then the question of immigration compels us to ask a third and inescapable question: Where is the line drawn?
In the instance of Minneapolis, the line is both wrongly drawn, and drawn at the wrong level.
I am a federalist. I hold firmly to the principle of subsidiarity, that matters should be resolved at the lowest level of authority competent to resolve them. Much that has been usurped by the national government would be more wisely and justly managed by the states, local communities, families, and institutions of civil society. The Constitution itself was framed to embody this division of powers, preserving the vitality of self-government against the dangers of centralized tyranny.
Yet subsidiarity is not an absolute doctrine, nor is federalism morally sovereign. The American Founding never regarded federalism as an end in itself, but as an instrument ordered toward justice, liberty, and the common good.
When the claims of federalism, or of local autonomy, come into conflict with the equal dignity of the human person as endowed by what the Declaration of Independence identifies as nature and nature’s God, then federalism must yield. This is the profound teaching of the Civil War. That great conflict established beyond doubt that there are moral limits which no level of government, national or local, may transgress, even under the guise of divided sovereignty. The principle of human equality, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, sets a boundary that no appeal to states’ rights or local preference can override.
Before 1861, the defenders of slavery advanced an argument we hear echoing in our own day—that the question was one of local control, that each state must be free to decide for itself whether human bondage should exist within its borders. The Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford lent its sanction to this view.
But Lincoln repudiated it utterly. He understood that the rights of man do not vary according to geography or popular vote. The self-evident truth that all men are created equal declares that no majority, no state legislature, no municipal council may lawfully decree some men unfit for liberty or membership in the political community on grounds that deny their humanity. To enslave a man is to deny his natural rights; to nullify federal authority in matters essential to national existence is to dissolve the Union that secures those rights.
Lincoln did not abolish federalism; he rescued it by subordinating it to the higher law of nature. Federalism endures only insofar as it is grounded in moral truth and serves the perpetuation of a regime dedicated to equal natural rights.
This distinction becomes decisive when we turn to the matter of immigration. Immigration concerns not merely internal policy but the very constitution of the political community—who may enter, under what conditions, and by whose authority. The power over naturalization and the regulation of foreign entry is among the essential attributes of sovereignty, expressly delegated to the national government by the Constitution (Article I, Section 8). Borders define the “We the People” whose consent forms the government. A people that cannot control its own membership cannot long govern itself justly or preserve equality.
More profoundly still, immigration policy must be measured against the same moral boundary Lincoln discerned. The federal government exists not to confer human dignity (that dignity is inherent in every person by virtue of natural right), but to recognize and secure it. Human dignity demands that no one be enslaved or deprived of life and liberty without due process; it does not entail an unqualified right to enter any political community or to claim automatic citizenship.
The real question is not whether authority is federal or local, but whether policy is directed toward justice, human dignity, and the common good of the nation. Lincoln saw that democracy unbounded by moral limits becomes incoherent and self-destructive. Likewise, a nation that treats its laws as optional, its borders as permeable at whim, and its citizenship as devoid of meaning invites the very chaos that destroys liberty.
Where, then, is the line?
For Lincoln, the line was the doctrine of human equality as a principle of natural right. It stood above feeling and process. The same principle governs here. Federalism is a means to the end of justice, not a refuge from moral duty. Local communities may not, under color or autonomy (“sanctuary cities”), nullify the Union’s authority over matters essential to its preservation—any more than southern states could nullify the Fugitive Slave Clause or obstruct the enforcement of laws necessary to national integrity. Such acts of interposition echo the doctrines of nullification that Lincoln condemned as fatal to the regime.
The lesson of Lincoln, of Aristotle, and of the Founders is unchanging: Decentralization without moral anchors descends into anarchy; centralization without moral purpose hardens into despotism. True statesmanship at every level orders power toward the permanent truths of natural right. Only thus can the America experiment endure as government of the people, by the people, and for the people—dedicated to the Declaration’s proposition “that all men are created equal.”