The subsidiarity candidate?

Whatever Rick Santorum's
fate in the New Hampshire primary today, his near win in the Iowa caucuses
inspired columnists Michael Gerson and David Brooks to burnish the candidate's image not only as champion
of the family and conservative Christianity but as a political thinker.
Santorum, they argued, is shaped by Catholic social teachings and in particular
by the Catholic principle of subsidiarity.

Subsidiarity is a term
used by John Paul II and a string of Catholic thinkers--including G. K.
Chesterton--to argue that some
activities belong to subsidiary or local agencies rather than to a dominant
central organization. Subsidiarity means that the state should not try to take
over functions that are properly the concern of the family, school, church,
union, corporation or local government.

Subsidiarity is a fertile idea, though
more suggestive than prescriptive. It's hard to pin down what subsidiarity
actually means, apart from some extreme cases. (Yes, we can agree that the
federal government shouldn't decide what families eat for breakfast or when
neighborhoods hold their block parties or who should teach seventh grade.)