Under New Management
I was reading a news story yesterday (found here) that I found particularly disturbing. The gist of the story is that a man in Milwaukee is losing his home to the city because of an unpaid $2600 parking fine. His house is paid off and worth $245,000. Somehow, the judge upheld this corruption stating that the city needs to collect on the fine and apparently agreed that a $245,000 home should about cover it.
Are you kidding me?
So this is the state of affairs now. Don’t be fooled, you don’t own your house. Not when your local government can come and take it from you for whatever reason they choose. Are you familiar with eminent domain? The bottom line is, we are all paying rent to the State (property taxes) because if we don’t pay, they kick us out and take our property. Apparently, now even your unpaid parking tickets will give them cause to come and take your property. Why aren’t more people disturbed by this? How do we let this sort of thing happen right under our noses?
Granted, the dude needs to pay up. Here’s the thing though; the ticket was because he had his truck with no license plate in his parents’ driveway. According to city ordinance in Milwaukee, you can not keep an unlicensed vehicle in your own driveway (or anyone else’s driveway) without facing a $50 fine. Huh? Okay, so the people of Milwaukee think this is a good idea, fine. If you don’t like it, don’t live in Milwaukee. So the guy gets fined and doesn’t pay his fine; bad news for him. You have to take care of your own responsibilities and it is irresponsible to not do something about a ticket that is racking up the bucks on a daily basis. So they take his house?!! What happened to garnishing wages or pension? What about even some jail time or working off the debt via community service to the city? But foreclosure? WHAT?!!
Okay, I’ll pretend for a moment that this is one of those cases where the media is misrepresenting something and we are given a false notion of injustice. Still, this sort of thing is not uncommon. A few years ago in the town we lived in, there was some property with a fairly large old house on it that was bordering the small airport. The city decided that this property was close enough to their property to allow them to lay claims to it. So they offered the owners a small fraction of its worth and told them to get out since they wanted to expand the airport property. They got away with it and there you go. When someone in a government position gets an itch, you lose if you are sitting on property that they want that will scratch that itch. And they call this a free country. It’s only free to those with the power apparently.
So what’s the point? More grumbling and complaining on my part? Have I nothing better to do? Well, with the cultural climate in America reeking with the status quo politics of yet another presidential power grab, it’s hard not to have these issues on the brain constantly. Why are there only a few people that even bother to notice these things? Why is it that we don’t get more upset about them? Why are we not jumping to the aid of these people who get attacked by their civil, state, and even federal goverments? We have turned soft and complacent. We are fat and lazy. This America we live in is no longer the America of our forefathers. It’s turned into an “Idiocracy” (check out that movie title…it’s not the greatest movie ever made, but is worth seeing). We care more about our conveniences and comforts than we do about our own freedom. The word itself has turned into a hollow, meaningless buzz word of modern politics that no one seems to have a clear definition of anymore. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson that said something to the effect of, “dissent is the greatest form of patriotism.” Yet dissenters get marginalized as “unpatriotic” (another word that doesn’t mean anything anymore) and the indefatigable status quo reigns supreme.
Is it ever going to end?
I would love to think that in my lifetime I could see freedom return to our politics, economics, and social structure. I’m not that optimistic at this point though. Christians keep opting for settling for the resident Republican simply because they are terrified of the evil liberal democrat getting into office, while everyone else just seems to think that the government should do everything for them so they go for the guy that will give them the biggest perceived slice of the proverbial pie. That’s the thing with democracies (and why the founding fathers were so opposed to them); it only takes a few short strokes to vote yourself into tyranny. I dare say we have got it and are not that far away from the same fall that every empire before us has experienced. As an example, consider that the economy continues to tank, largely due to the Feds. The Federal Reserve keeps tinkering with interest rates and printing more un-backed money, creating artificial inflation (as if there is any other kind). The powers-that-be wage unconstitutional war on sovereign nations for dubious reasons, expending a ridiculous amount of resources that they have to first acquire from us via confiscatory taxation. They spend money they don’t have and get away with it, all the while punishing us and taking our property if we do the same. They have launched and continue to hold us in an endless cycle of debt and we think that this next president is going to fix it all. Those are just a few “tip of the iceberg” examples of how they affect the economy; I won’t even elaborate on the other political and social aspects. It’s a formula that inevitably will doom this country and we just keep going along with it. We are not powerless, but we act like we are. Or we just keep sticking our heads in the sand, chanting that it’s not really happening and everything will be okay as long as we just vote Republican (or Democrat as the case may be). It’s just not going to work. It hasn’t worked yet, why do we continue to do the same thing thinking that this time it will be different?
So what do we do? I’ve been asking myself that for years. What can we do that will make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things? I’m not sure. I’ve simply started by trying to speak to these things as I have opportunity, and seizing the opportunity to support people like Ron Paul when they come along. Hopefully, he shook things up enough during this last presidential primary cycle that people will start thinking twice about what they want in their government officials. It may not affect this election, but perhaps the next one will be affected (especially after people see that neither McCain nor Obama has actually changed anything, and mark my words, they won’t). We can only hope. For now, I would suggest trying to think outside of your political box. Check out sites like lewrockwell.com to read about some more libertarian views of politics. These people are pros at pointing out the problems without presenting much by way of solutions, but it at least might help you start to think differently about your approach to politics. Even better is the voice of paleoconservative politics (read: classically and “Christianly” conservative), Chronicles magazine (found here). Naturally there are no perfect systems but the folks at these websites tend to be pretty thoughtful and will help with the “out of the box” thinking process.
Minds have to change one at a time. All I can be sure of is my own mind and I hope that my musings here might influence a few others. We don’t have to agree on every detail to at least take a few steps toward changing the political climate in this country. More dialog and less status quo might help. If we can’t have the old Town Hall style meetings, then let’s try to make some using the tools that we have available, such as the internet. Maybe we can see something change in our lifetime after all. Here’s hoping…