Mail 683 2011 Monday July 11, 2011 – 2
People are looking at this as an example of a government official gone mad (or, maybe, just stupid) and inappropriately using his power.
See, I don’t know about that. From the looks of things this is a man executing the duties of his office in a manner that seems entirely reasonable to him. His community has charged him with maintaining its chosen standards, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.
Maybe what needs to happen here is that instead of asking why this guy can’t find someone else to bother, we should instead ask why there’s an official Department Of Bothering People at all. Don’t cry about how this is a special exception, because *everyone* has a reason why they’re a special exception. Complain that the law exists at all. This isn’t even the voluntary-contract situation of the dread Homeowner’s Association; this is an employee of the elected municipal government. If you don’t like what’s going on, then change it! Find the people in charge; get THEM to handle it. We do not claim that a thief’s hands should be in jail but the rest of him go free.
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Mike T. Powers
I tend to agree. It’s a local matter, and I firmly believe in local government. I probably should have made that clear but I was wondering if anyone else would notice. I have to say my proclivity is to let local governments do a great many things, including censorship of books and movies. I’d let Boston ban obscenity in Boston; I just wouldn’t let Boston ban Lady Chatterly in Cambridge. Of course Boston isn’t likely to ban anything nowadays, nor are very many other communities. The days are long over when the Binford Commission could forbid me to see Jane Russell in the Outlaw in the city of Memphis and we had to go over the Harahan Bridge to West Memphis in Arkansas. And I completely agree that this is a local affair to be handled by locals.
Now when it comes to Federal employees at a time when we are broke I take an entirely different view… Thanks.
Closing the Iranian border
Dear Dr Pournelle,
your commenter ‘Ed’ asks, referring to the Iranian border, "So they can afford it and we can’t?", and you respond "It’s a matter of will." May I suggest that you take another look at the quoted text? It does not say that Iran has closed its border, it says that the Iranian government has "*announced* that 90 percent of [its] border has been sealed". Well, anyone can announce anything they like, but if, tomorrow morning, Obama announced that he had closed the Mexican border, would you believe him? And if not, why believe the Iranians? And this is all the more true because the quote goes on to point out that the Iranians have lost several thousand soldiers in their effort to keep that border closed (which seems to indicate something on the level of ongoing guerrilla warfare), and that heroin and opium are *still* getting through.
I suggest, then, that even if closing the Mexican border is indeed a matter of will, the Iranian case does not demonstrate any such thing.
Regards,
Rolf Andreassen.
Actually, haven’t various politicians told us that the US border is under control? Or will be Real Soon Now. The Iranians would do it if they could; the question is whether the current politicians want to at all. I don’t really care about Iranian control of their borders so long as I don’t have to pay for it. I do care about our. Alas I have paid for a fence that was never built, and a bunch of other stuff.
