maybe if some of you kept this in mind, you wouldn’t waste your time and your chance to actually support liberty the first time it passes around, like Ron Paul.

Dude…let it go.

http://news.goldseek.com/ClifDroke/1212159600.php

http://www.goldseek.com/tools/print.php

as for your specific outrage at the county level, what can you say? if citizens aren’t dedicated enough to raise enough Hell, then you’ll have to live with it. other than that, this post can’t do much beyond sounding the clarion call in general for the entire population to raise Hell starting at their local level. i don’t see this doing much, because America’s population is far lesser than the population of 1776, in intellect, in principle, in morals (yes i said morals, wahwah), in civics, and in courage.

you’re going to have to sit back and watch capitulation like this happen over and over and over as the coming years pass. and i guarantee that you see the acceleration of totalitarian laws and aquiescing of the population as this nation not only gets poorer, but also is forced to pay for its Communism directly, as opposed to the past where a lot of the cost of our Communism was passed onto foreign markets in the form of national debt financing.

maybe if some of you kept this in mind, you wouldn’t waste your time and your chance to actually support liberty the first time it passes around, like Ron Paul. but i know in my heart that the same people will fall in love with trivial matters and divisiveness designed exactly for the purpose, and instead end up choosing to accept a much less inspiring person to crown as legitimate. i honestly expect nothing more from most of you. now or in the future. 2007-2008 really educated me about “people.” this is the last time i spend so much time being into politics; from now on i’m spending my time strengthening my own position.

Yeah, I thought we are the Judean People’s Front!

No…they’re sitting over there.

SPLITTERS!!!

My point is that, while local control is often preferable to federal, it doesn’t mean that local control is just.

Not to get into a whole anarchy v. minarchy thing here, but any time you have a government you’re going to have some injustice occur. That’s just the nature of the beast.

Is local control better than federal control? In some ways yes, in some ways no…there are obviously tradeoffs. But when bad things happen with government at the local level, then there are fewer people affected and they have more options for dealing with it than they would if this stuff happened higher up. And that is why local control is preferable.

That said, if it turns out that the government of Black Jack is using this law to violate peoples’ 1st and 14th Amendment rights, I wouldn’t have a problem with the state or feds stepping in and putting a stop to it. I believe that the Bill of Rights trumps local prerogative.

It’s arrogant to assume that no problems can get fixed unless uninvolved people happen to notice them, or unless government somehow steps in to correct it.

That’s not my assumption. Problems can be fixed any time the people of that town want them to be fixed. Whether that’s through the rest of the country laughing at their backwardness through the media, or through national organizations putting the brakes on local constituencies that are giving them a bad name, or simply the realization by those townspeople that they’re wrong. But that doesn’t change the fact that what they’re doing is bad, and that in many cases like this, things like the 14th Amendment– a central-government protection– might actually help these people if they wanted to fight it that high up the chain.

My point is that, while local control is often preferable to federal, it doesn’t mean that local control is just.

Demanding “states rights” and local control may be a step on the road to a more free society, but it is a means towards freedom, it does not ensure freedom by itself. The only way to ensure freedom is to fight against government infringement of our rights vigilantly on all levels.

PS – Thanks a lot, guys. You’ve just made The Liberty Papers officially part of the evil Zionist conspiracy. Go to your rooms and think about what you’ve done!

I think you’re missing one of the problems with this sort of infringement of rights. This sort (and other sorts) of crap goes on all over the country every day, and often doesn’t get corrected because of a lack of media coverage or an unsympathetic local electorate.

I’m not missing it…I’m saying that just because the issue isn’t being dealt with nationally doesn’t mean that the people involved don’t have any recourse. When looking at a small town like that, moving is the most simple solution (you’re as likely to find a good job somewhere else as you will in any small town). Suing the city is another (most of them can’t afford to deal with a big lawsuit). Bringing up the issue to the national organization of whatever sect of Baptists are running the town is yet another (most national organizations don’t like going on record as supporting discrimination and have some sway over local congregations). It’s arrogant to assume that no problems can get fixed unless uninvolved people happen to notice them, or unless government somehow steps in to correct it.

You’re saying that we shouldn’t be fighting each other, but against our common enemy, the Judean People’s Front?

Piss off…it’s the People’s Front of Judea that we’ve got to worry about.

Splitter.

:)

I agree that state government can be just as repressive as federal…I’m just saying that you have more options for dealing with oppressive state governments than you do with the feds.

You’re saying that we shouldn’t be fighting each other, but against our common enemy, the Judean People’s Front?

In this case, it’s a local statute giving the government authority over your property. I made a comment on the Agitator where this came up; I’ve got a friend who’s familiar with Black Jack and he says it’s an overwhelmingly Baptist community, so the residents of the town are basically using the laws to enforce their personal beliefs. One of the other commenters on Balko’s site noted that he worked there for awhile and he believes that there’s a definite element of racism at play here as well (it appears that the people getting hurt by it are also ethnic minorities in that area). If that’s the case, then probably the reason that the community’s not up in arms is that the law is being arbitrarily applied to people that most in the community would consider “undesirable” and it just hasn’t pissed off enough of the people in the majority to make them want to change it.

I prefer local government, but let’s not pretend that it costs much less than the federal government.