Two hundred-thirty six years ago, a group of patriots dumped tea into Boston Harbor as a protest against British taxation, and really, British rule, generally.
America was born as an independent nation, spread across a continent, and built the most prosperous society in the world in the years since.
While we have grown in so many admirable ways in the intervening generations, we have abandoned – or been asked to abandon – much of the independent and forthright character that made us a free and great republic.
Even in a small town, like Whitewater, Wisconsin, there is an expectation that officials will be treated with a certain deference. What they call politeness is more like a servile deference, a fawning and compliant attitude.
When one person feels this way, he collects and selects others who think as he does.
Some months ago, I wrote about the unfortunate situation in which a homeowner’s property was flooded by a sewer backup while he was serving abroad.
Unfortunate, but more than that – odd, too. Odd that citizens were asked to assume that a decision the insurance carrier for the city made to deny coverage was – by simple consequence – proof that the city was not liable.
That’s odd, because almost anyone knows that there may be a difference between damage an insurance carrier will cover and what the law may determine about an insured’s liability.
Yet, when an official comes to believe that what he says must receive assent because he has said it, then justification and reasoning are secondary to mere declaration.
One often hears that small towns encourage greater humility, but I simply cannot tell.
I am quite sure that websites, blogs, email, digital cameras, hand-held video cameras, and phones that can take pictures and record video make it easier to spread a message that’s free of official influence.
This year, current-day tea party protesters have taken advantage of all these media to spread a message that politicians, bureaucrats, and their status-quo defenders cannot easily obstruct or edit.
Now, I know very well that some progressives dislike the tea party movement, but those on the left should support the means if not the ends. The clever use of video and websites to promote a message is one from which the left can learn, and one which they will surely emulate.
(I am not on the left, but instead am a libertarian. Still, I find it foolish for progressives, or true conservatives, for that matter, to object to media that help advance individual rights.)
Most interesting to me is the use of video recordings of ordinary citizens asking questions at a public meeting. It takes scarcely any time to upload video of a pompous official to YouTube for an entire community to see.
(Predictably, so-called public servants often ban cameras from town halls. Tea Party activists have learned to take in a few cameras in different parts of a room, so that one camera can record the confiscation – sometimes aggressively – of a second camera.)
A politician who grew to maturity in an era of Time, Newsweek, the CBS Evening News and one compliant local newspaper might find this new era chaotic and somehow wrong.
If every meeting in Whitewater were recorded – with audio or video – what would public meetings in our small town be like? We’d have no possibility of leaving something out of the meeting’s minutes, no matter how unintentional those omissions might be.
A video camera could supplement, and improve, the written record. A camera properly placed, costing not much, really, would be an advance over minutes alone.
There are many fine cameras with excellent features that consumers purchase and use satisfactorily each day.
But how willing would groups be to have a video record of every public meeting? (Here I emphasize that my question concerns only public meetings. No official should feel concern about the recording of a meeting that is, in any event, open to the public.)
One of the best ways to assure public awareness of political developments would be video recording of all public meetings, even with a simple camera on a tripod.
Not merely those that are recorded now, but those that are not – the meetings of the Police and Fire Commission, the Community Development Authority (each committee and subgroup, each and every time), etc.
(Our public access channel does a very fine job – the only truly fine job anyone does – of covering the meetings. We would be far less knowledgeable without a complete video record of Council, Planning, and school board meetings, among others.)
You can be assured that the same people who insist that one should never say a contrary word will suddenly have myriad objections and serious concerns about expanded recording.
Oh my – in those objections, one could not be more hypocritical and self-interested, even if one tried.