Democracy and Freedom: Inconvenient Obstacles

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." - George Washington

In an article published on CNN.com in 1997, we are told: "The history of freedom of speech and the press in the United States has often been tied to criticism of the government, and particularly associated with war and social upheaval, fear and anger."

Our neighbors and we, in the Town of Rochester, live in an environment remarkably like the one described. We have been subjected to social upheaval against our wills by those who have no understanding of what the rural character of our Town is all about. Our Town Board is sowing fear among us by their vindictive, purgative political acts punishing those who happen to criticize our local government. Of course, all this creates anger at those who believe their political agendas, their selfish interests and their pursuit of power at all cost outweigh the rights and freedoms of the people of the Town of Rochester.

I've spoken and written a great deal about the events of the past two months. We have all had extensive conversations amongst ourselves. The fact is, however, that the "us versus them" atmosphere fostered in the Town of Rochester by our Town Board and their supporters reared its ugly head far before February 1, 2007. In early 2006, the new Lib-Dem majority on the Town Board gleefully began getting rid of everyone they could who opposed their dictatorial New Order in Town. They replaced neighbors of ours who had long served our community and whose knowledge and experience was unparalleled within our Town. In their places, they put people who did not have backgrounds to outweigh or even match those whose seats they tried to fill (to say they were sadly unsuccessful is to be charitable). One blatant example of this political purge was the naming of a gentleman who had never before served on our Planning Board to be Chairman.

Now, I'm not naive. I know that new regimes often put their own people in and kick out those previously appointed. It's the hypocrisy that bothers me. If you're going to make political appointments, acknowledge them as such. Don't pretend that you are doing the Town some great favor by bringing in experts of the highest caliber. The people of the Town of Rochester are not stupid, we know the way the world turns. When you lie to us about your motivations, don't expect us to believe in your pseudo-altruistic anthems to Open Government.

I wonder how many of those who think it's just fine to replace anyone and everyone volunteering on behalf of our Town as soon as possible are huffing and puffing over the Bush Administration's firing of eight U.S. Attorneys six years after the President took office. Just a hypothetical musing.

They have the power to replace anyone, that much is clear. They also have the power to keep their critics off the various Committees. What they are not permitted to do is attack someone's reputation with a half-baked story, supposedly reported to the Town Board by some unnamed "residents". They also may not muzzle the rest of us when we point out the distasteful, disreputable and thoroughly un-American nature of their acts.

The friction doesn't stop with appointments and attacks on our Freedom of Speech. A little over a year ago, we had a Public Hearing about establishing the Building Moratorium under which we currently live. At that hearing, the comments were overwhelmingly against the Moratorium (roughly 4-to-1, if memory serves), yet the Town Board passed the Moratorium with one lone member dissenting. This blatant rejection of public opinion as the guiding hand behind public policy decisions demonstrates that the Town Board never truly considered the desires of the Townspeople when making their decisions. In fact, in all likelihood, their minds were made up and the decision made before anyone stepped foot in the Firehouse that night. In other words, the Public Hearing was a formality, an inconvenient hurdle they needed to get past in order to achieve their goals. The Public itself, our neighbors, were treated as an obstacle rather than as the people they are morally obligated to represent.

The Town Board came into office with the mindset that they were a conquering army, pillaging at will. Now that they have been revealed as fundamentally anti-democratic in their attitudes, anti-freedom in their actions and anti-neighbor in their interactions with the Town, they have developed a siege mentality. They are circling the wagons and taking potshots at the rest of us. The problem is, we're not an opposing army. We are the People of the Town of Rochester. We are their employers, not the Visigoths.

All we want is respect and representation, the two things they are apparently incapable of giving us.