All politics are national (updated!)

[realized that I've got three arguments tangled together here, so I'll try and unwrap them]

This story brilliantly shows how "cooperative federalism" can co-opt civil society in favor of a central authority:

Court to hear arguments on campus Christian group

Central questions:

(1) Does a group have a right to define its membership?

The issue here is whether the group has the right to demand voting members sign a "statement of faith" declaring that they believe only certain things to be morally right. Failure to include this kind of statement opens the group to the possibility of having its charter overridden by activists who can assemble a crowd in time for club elections.

This approach has been suggested to "tame" the British National Party and helped get McCain the GOP nomination. With both progressive and Tea Party activists able to assemble large, relatively motivate crowds, groups that oppose either would do well to limit access to its membership. Is a statement of political belief fundamentally different from a statement of moral belief?

In pie-centric terms: Should I be required to admit pie cabinet members who don't believe in sustainable homemade pie making? Actually, it's not that hard to imagine such people. They argue for continuing to underfund massive social programs and punishing political cooperation. I am happy to talk to such people, but do I have to open my group's identity to them?

(2) Is this a form of federal "regulatory capture", giving it effective control of civil society?

The implicit imprimature and improved access to potential members that come from recognition and subsidies guarantee that groups that comply with the central authority will grow faster than those that do not. In this environment, control of government means control of the rules of civil society. Once civic groups such as churches and clubs or states and municipalities become dependent on a special subsidy or tax status, they get co-opted by the taxing authority. At that point, a change in tax or recognition rules becomes an existential threat, and so every group must choose between its sense of mission and keeping its lights on. China's ham-fisted censors could learn a lot from this more subtle approach.

Want to see women in the Catholic priesthood? Don't appeal to Rome, appeal to Washington and demand they pay full taxes on discriminatory seminaries. Don't like abortion? Mandate that insurance companies not include such coverage in subsidized plans. Want to make helmets mandatory for motorcycles and bicycles, mandate seatbelt use and force the creation of bicycle lanes? Tie them to highway funding.

Well intentioned efforts to support civil society inevitably result in unhealthy relationships. Internationally, this happens when NGOs get funding from governments and effectively become tools of their sponsor's policy. What are civic organizations supposed to learn from ACORN's demise at the hands of edited video tapes? How about this: if you take federal money keep your group's views as close to mainstream as possible.

(3) How do we make politics local again?

"Values based" politics unite people nationwide who share a sense of identity. Media sources that pander to their audience's ideology. Heavily gerrymandered districts and seniority rules that reward federal and state legislators for long service guarantee that the extremes of both parties make the leadership more nervous than voters in the middle.

I have some ideas for future posts, but that's how I'd like to frame the question. Can we make a more respectful civil society by disaggregating control of it? If so, how? If not, what is the correct path?