Signs of Spring

The frost heaves were bad this past month. After a couple weeks of abnormally warm temps, the roads are starting to calm down a bit. Both my truck's suspension, and my spine are grateful. Besides which, it is not easy to dodge the bumps, work the clutch, shift AND not spill the coffee on your lap.

Whatever you do, don't put the cup between your legs. Just sayin'

Also, town meeting was last Saturday. I was unable to actually attend. Instead, I stood in as temporary Girl Scout Leader overseeing the sale of Girl Scout Cookies outside the meeting. Filling in for my sick bride. As town meetings go, it apparently lacked the entertainment value of some past years. 31 warrant articles dispatched in a mere 3.5 hours.

Now the floods are here. 3 days of torrential rains. Rivers cresting over flood stage. Roads washing out. Neighborhoods evacuated. No need to declare a state of emergency, says the Governor. The SOE from the windstorm 2 weeks ago is still in force. Now that's a relief.

The blue lines are running to and fro in the woods, carrying that precious sugar sap down to the old fashioned plastic barrels so the farmers can lift them onto the flatbed with a propane powered forklift and bring them to the sugar house where the water will be boiled off by a heat from a mini nuclear reactor core. Don't worry, it doesn't give off any greenhouse gases, so it won't contribute to global warming.

And finally - mud.

Just another typical New Hampshire spring.

A Democracy of Neighbors

These last two Saturdays were taken up by the physical and personal practice of democratic governance in what be it’s most fundamental and direct form – the New England town meeting. Last week, my town, Barnstead NH, held it’s annual meeting. The list of warrant articles was much shorter than in past years. The biggest items put before the people were hiring another full time police officer ($70,000 added to the budget), $100,000 for a emergency expenses fund for dealing with natural emergencies, and the budget itself.  Smaller items included the approval of the transferal of deeds for certain properties purchased through a tax sale, requests for the town to assume the maintenance and upgrade of certain private roads, and so on. In the end the police officer was voted down, the emergency fund was amended to $25K and then to $80K, the roads will stay private and the budget was passed at $3 million and some change. Discussion was often lively and direct, but never out of line (although the line is a pretty fluid concept in some town meetings) and Robert’s rules were put to good work keeping things straight and in good order. We started at 9:00 and were done by 1:00 in the afternoon.

Today was the meeting for the School Board. The budget was the single biggest item, with a new teacher contract coming in close to that. Our teachers have worked without a contract for a year,  after the first negotiated contract was turned down at last year’s meeting as being to rich. This year’s contract was more modest and was accepted with a good margin. The budget discussion was also interesting, with an amendment from the floor proposing to strip $100,000 from the superintendents operating budget in order to force him to become a lobbyist to obtain money from the state and federal governments promised us to fund mandates placed upon our local school systems. Although the amendment would likely not have achieved it’s desired ends if passed, it was more of a political statement anyways. The good people of the town got the statement, and having heard the message voted it down soundly before passing the budget as proposed. 13 articles were disposed of by noon.

The school board meeting was noteworthy in that the school budget is easily 3-4 times the town budget, but usually gets a smaller attendance. Not this time. The school board meeting was packed.

I love these meetings for a few reasons. Our nation’s founders fought for, among other things, the right for representation before taxation. What I was privileged to take part in today was almost precisely the converse of having taxes levied by a king over the sea, or even a legislature boxed up in never never land. It was we, the people, discussing what we need to do in order to maintain a civil and effective society and voting to tax ourselves to create what we want. Or, in many cases, voting to NOT tax ourselves. And then we must live with our own decisions, for good or for ill. A theme you will come up against again and again in the essays of Wendell Berry is that local control is the only type of control that is really safe and healthy in the long run. The example that comes to mind is of the shift in ownership that has taken place in recent decades of the great north woods of Maine, NH, VT, and NY. Especially in Maine, the great lumber mills were once owned by local people. They were indeed wealthy and powerful owners of enormous tracts of land, but they lived in the same region as their holdings, and employed people who were essentially their neighbors. Now, most of those holding have been transferred to multinational conglomerates who have no care for the the people, no concern for the land, but know it only as numbers on a spreadsheet that must be made to add up a certain way. Because they do not have to LIVE WITH their decisions, they make decisions without much concern for the human implications of those decisions. This is, perhaps a transferable principle to government as well. It is easy to for someone in Washington DC, or in Concord for that matter, to pass a law mandating this or that. They may or may not fund the mandate, but it doesn't matter because then the mandate becomes the problem of the local people. On the other hand, every decision we make at town meeting carries the very clear awareness that it affects not only me, but my neighbors -- the people I see, and whose home I drive by every day. The people whose kids play with my kids. And when I say this awareness is clear, I mean it. It is a topic that is brought up in every discussion at the town meeting -- "this is going to be tough for the folks whose taxes are going to go up." We hear it over and over again. I suspect that even though we are amateurs, this sort of communal awareness causes us to make, on the whole, pretty reasonable decisions.

There are downsides to a local town based government run along these lines, and probably good reasons why you don’t find it anywhere BUT New England. But I gotta tell you, I really like it. I suspect that if more places ran themselves along these lines, we might be much better off as a nation. 

Divine Right of Who?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- From the Declaration of Independence

We do indeed hold these truths to be self evident. In fact, it is difficult to imagine anyone seriously suggesting that democracy is not the absolute, hands down, very best way to organize a government. It is such a part of our culture and the spirit of our age.

Assistant Village Idiot recently published a thoughtful post on taking scientific method for granted. Science as we know it, and the worldview that comes with it, is a recent construct in the history of the world. We tend to think that it is the only right thinking way to think. And yet, as AVI points out, hundreds of empires have risen and crumbled without the use of the scientific method. Men have not always relied upon the positing and testing of hypotheses to determine how to live their lives, or build a society.

But we have. The implications of this are enormous.

We tend to think the same way about democracy. Of course the people have the right of overthrow despots, and establish a government amendable to our inalienable rights. Of course! But, what it that’s wrong? What if we have no such right. Or what if that right is much more tightly circumscribed than we like to think? Our Declaration of Independence even says we have a duty to do so. Do we?

What if we the people have no inalienable rights? What if kings really do have a divine right?
What would we do then?

And, if we are going to talk about rights, who grants us these rights? Rights are by rights a grant. The originate somewhere, and are grounded in some authority. If we remove, or refuse to acknowledge that authority, can we have any actual rights? Or do we just strut about claiming them even though they don't exist? Or, as I think is more likely, do we just strut about claiming them with no sense of their source, like spoiled children who simply expect to receive their allowance regardless of....well, of anything else.

I guess every idea has it's unforeseen consequences. There is no avoiding it. This idea of democracy has now finally been around long enough for us to begin to see it's real unfolding. It's not over yet. What will the history books say about it 500 years from now?

Town Meeting Basics

Saturday was Town Meeting day here in Barnstead. For those of you not familiar, a brief primer on the Town Meeting form of self-government is in order. Wikipedia does a pretty good job explaining how the different New England States handle Town Meetings. You will need to page down a bit to get to the NH specifics. Dracutforum has a nice shorter description. It refers specifically to a town in Massachussetts, so it differs from how we do it up here on a few details. Nevertheless, the basics are all in place.

For those of you who are not fortunate enough to participate in direct democracy, and have direct influence on taxation that governs so much of your own economic and social life, I would encourage you to read up. While it certainly has limitations, there is much to recommend this system – not least of all it’s pure entertainment value.

Not that I want you to move here. That would just mean more roads and schools to pay for.