Vituperation Won’t Enhance Freedoms Or Protect Our Rights

“The ragged edge,” the special report published recently by The Spokesman-Review, is an outstanding contribution to the effort to examine some of the issues affecting people today. It illumines the attitudes and concerns of a significant number of people in the region.

However, the discussion must take another step. It is easy enough to agree with the anger generated by some of the horror stories of bureaucratic abuse. The challenge is to find just solutions that respect the rights of everyone.

The proposed solutions of many in the Christian Patriot and militia movements are not acceptable because they are not based on reality, they include elements of bigotry, sexism and racism, and they promote violence and intimidation.

Organized society, government at all levels, exist to maintain that sensitive balance between rights and responsibilities. Certainly there can be abuses, but government imposes such things as environmental regulations for a reason. They are in place, for example, so that we don’t have to breathe contaminated air or drink unhealthy water. Balancing our right to healthy air and water imposes burdens on the industrial manufacturer, the property owner who wants to develop a riverfront and the rancher who uses a stream to water cattle.

And regulations protect us. The declining number of house fires is directly attributable to improved building regulations.

As our society grows more complex and more populated, the amount of organization that is needed increases. Once there was no internet; now we are struggling with controlling pornography and various scams that show up on it.

If one person lives alone on 40 acres in the mountains, very little regulation is needed. If five people live on that same property, more regulation is needed. Even more is needed if a hundred people share the same space and resources.

Certainly there can be abuses. Certainly we need to discuss issues of balancing rights and responsibilities and what level of government - organized society - can best maintain that balance. However. those who want to eliminate regulations, who want to turn back the clock to “the good old days,,” or who want to preserve a particular style of life, are often missing the realities of today.

We cannot return to the destructive farming, ranching, mining, fishing and logging practices that were based on the premise that it is acceptable to use up the resource because there is always more just over the next hill.

Certainty the impact of regulations must be discussed and those affected should have a voice. But those who seek, absolute property rights and declare regulations and the government that enforces them, to be “the enemy” are not living in the real world.

So here’s the rub: All too often we want less regulation on us but more on everyone else.

Many people who say they are anti-government, including some mentioned in “the ragged edge” series, are really just anti-government as it is now. Very likely their vision of government would impose as many if not more regulations than we have now, perhaps just fewer on themselves and more on everyone else.

The issues behind this sentiment need to be addressed, but let’s examine the solutions that are proposed. Indeed, in many cases no solution is put forward at all, other than declaring the government to be the enemy and wanting less of it.

Many in the series advocate local control. It has become a cliche to say that local government governs best, but is that true? Can counties and states adequately cope with environmental, financial, health and safety issues that reach across county and state lines?

Would slavery be gone or civil rights adequately pursued if such issues were left entirely to states and local communities? Will not shifting regulatory power away from federal government to local government simply put more power into the hands of multinational corporations, for whom the bottom line is sometimes more important than people’s health and rights?

Certainly some who are attacking government have an agenda that includes bigotry. Their vision is of a society in which some have more rights than others. While often this disparity is along racial lines, it crosses gender, class and other lines as well.

Their view of the Constitution as they perceive it to have been written - without all of the amendments and without 200-plus years of court interpretation - does not assure equal rights for people of color, women or children. This view may not be the hatred-filled racism of the Aryan Nations, but it is racism, for it perpetuates a society in which some do not have equal rights.

So, let’s work on the issues, but be critical of the solutions.

Certainly the solution of the Aryan Nations is not acceptable. The racism in the agenda of many elements of the militia and Christian Patriots renders their direction unacceptable as well. And processes that are based on intimidition and violence - who has the biggest gun - are not acceptable, either.

Attempting to deal with today’s challenges in ways that are divisive, racist, sexist or violent is not progress.

We all enter into something of a contract with the greater society around us. I respect the rights of others; in turn others respect my rights. I contribute to the well-being of others and they to mine. I am richer when others around me are rich, and poorer when they are poor.

We have to ask ourselves if the militias and the various groups under the name of “patriots” promote a just society and a social contract that is workable. lf not, they are not worthy of our time.

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