If you’ve been reading The Dispatch over the last few months
you’re probably aware of local issues that have been discussed and
discoursed. For example:
If you’ve been reading The Dispatch over the last few months you’re probably aware of local issues that have been discussed and discoursed. For example:
• environmental effects of a new super Wal-Mart in Gilroy
• future of Gilroy’s Downtown area
• candidates running for Gilroy City Council and Mayor
• test results in the Gilroy Unified School District
• elimination of the sale of fireworks in Gilroy
• annexation of the Day Road property into the Gilroy city limits
• perchlorate contamination
All of these issues have produced, let’s face it, stress in our community. And that stress has been placed upon our local citizens, most who are stressing just to earn a living. So I raise the question, do we really need additional stress coming from our own hometown? Answer: of course not!
So, maybe Gilroy should follow the lead of Denver Colorado. This coming November, Denver voters will take to the polls to consider a “peaceful initiative,” requiring the city to institute policies to reduce stress. No joke.
It turns out that an unemployed worker (who is probably stressed-out himself) gathered enough signatures to force the City Council to place an initiative on the ballot. The initiative reads: “Shall the voters for the City and County of Denver adopt an Initiated Ordinance to require the city to help ensure public safety by increasing peacefulness – that is, by defusing political, religious and ethnic tensions, both locally and globally – through the identification and implementation of any systematic, stress-reducing techniques or programs, whether mental, physical, etc?”
Now just think about the advantages that the passage of a similar measure would have here in Gilroy! Consider how our City Council would be forced to work as a team towards identifying and implementing “systematic, stress-reducing programs” that would apply to our citizens. No more fighting among the City Council members. Also consider how public discussion in The Dispatch on stress-producing subjects would have to be excluded as well, since that would be counter productive to the city’s stress-reduction goal. Why even local columnist Dennis Taylor would be restricted to write only about all the good things the Sierra Club has done for us.
In fact, a refusal by the Gilroy City Council to institute such a measure would make them downright negligent. How?
Well, the logic in Denver goes like this: since the city officials are required to uphold the U.S. and state constitution which calls for providing for the common defense, which really means public safety, and also ensuring domestic tranquility, then this all means that peace is the final objective. So, you can consider stress to be an environmental health hazard, just like perchlorate. And since there are plenty of laws that protect citizens against health hazards, it’s therefore in the best interests of the city to protect its citizens against stress as well, especially by defusing political, religious and ethnic tensions.
While Denver voters will have to vote on this initiative in November, I hope you realize that I’m raising this possibility for Gilroy only in jest. My point is to demonstrate the absurdity of another ill produced byproduct of liberal thinking, whenever liberalism puts its mind into seeking the solution for social problems.
Leave it to socialism (masking as modern liberalism) to save the people from themselves by mandating more and more laws with more and more bureaucratic control to manage enforcement as more and more tax dollars are poured down the drain to insure compliance. This Denver initiative is just another example. On a practical point, how in the world does any city, large or small, take realistic steps to reduce “society-wide stress” in order to promote peacefulness within its boundaries by establishing laws to defuse political, religious and ethnic tensions? And how does anyone think government can enforce such laws?
Our government has willfully thrown out the best 10 laws (called the Ten Commandments) ever written to promote the welfare of society and defuse stress. And that’s very unfortunate, because as individual morality and self-control declines, I contend that political, religious, and ethnic stress increases both nationally and locally. George Washington said “… reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Thomas Jefferson said “My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
The Denver initiative attempts to fix a problem compounded by an ever declining national morality. And sure enough, as the decline continues, more bad government rules and regulations will come forth. If the voters of Denver pass this initiative, they will have proven my point.
