"Restoring the Village"

From the April 2011 issue of First Things, here is a nice essay by Anthony Esolen, "Restoring the Village."  It's not (just) about urbanism, but about subsidiarity and pluralism.  A bit:

 . . . By signing Magna Carta, the king conceded that there were many centers of authority besides his own, from that of his enemy the belligerent duke down to that of the free man in his home.

These other centers of authority were embedded in a history of their own that rightly commanded reverence. Therefore the right of inheritance is the most jealously guarded liberty in Magna Carta. You may not pillage a man’s castle simply because he happens to have died. We mistake the matter entirely if we consider such a right only in terms of wealth retained. The right of inheritance allowed a family the same kind of being extending through the centuries that the nation enjoyed. It honored the family as not merely a biological happenstance within the state but as a metaphysical and political reality that preceded the state. . . .