Nevada County Lurches Toward Dystopian Future

Have you noticed that the labels that we assign to politics are completely confusing? Who is the Right? Who is the Left? What do Democrats and Republicans stand for? Last week, Mitt Romney announced that he will not seek re-election as a senator for Utah which has led to speculation that Romney will make a third run at the presidency under the “No Labels” banner in order to stop Donald Trump. I could care less about Romney or “No Labels,” but the idea got me thinking about how we label politicians and their corresponding ideologies. Let us discard all the labels and think without them about how our county works and who we are. Instead of labeling our beliefs with arbitrary words, let’s look at the extremes of two ideologies, Ideology A and Ideology B, and without these labels, determine how we want our own state and county to function.

Founding Fathers Believed that Man is Good by Nature

The historical and fundamental foundation of Ideology A is the idea that man is, by nature, good and has the ability to regulate himself in a virtuous manner. Indeed, our founding fathers were radical and made Ideology A the basis of the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Adherents to Ideology A believe that, instead of living under a tyrannical government which regulates the behavior of society, man is virtuous and has the ability to regulate his own behavior through self-restraint and to individually be a good neighbor as well. By way of Ideology A, man has a right to care for himself and a duty to care for those around him for the collective benefit of all. 

The extreme of Ideology A theoretically results in a utopian society in which all people live a virtuous life without any government at all. Some mistake this ideological utopian view as advocating anarchy and political disorder. Quite to the contrary, the utopian view of Ideology A is completely peaceful political discourse, because as the theory goes and because man is inherently good, the necessary restraint on individual behavior comes from within each and every human being. In order to picture this society, one needs to look no further than John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” Lennon requests his listeners to imagine all the people sharing all the world and living life in peace.

Sounds like an amazing world where seven billion people all live in peace and take care of everyone at the same time with absolutely no government. But as with all utopian ideologies, the extremes are impossible. Predictably, and without letting go of the idea that man is inherently good, one must admit that man, at least at this point in history, is not perfect. With this admission and if the restraint upon behavior does not come from within the individual, the restraint must come from outside the individual. As such, we end up living in the real world in which there must be some collective control upon each individual. 

Ideologues Believe that Man Must be Controlled by Government

This realization brings us to Ideology B which is the collective control upon the individual by society. The extreme of Ideology B is founded, not upon the belief that man is good by his nature and can be virtuous, but rather that man is inherently evil and must be controlled lest we fall into anarchy and political disorder. In order to picture this completely collectivized society of Ideology B, one needs to look no further than to our recent past in which the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany attempted to control not only the actions of the individual but also individual thought. In the present, the best example of Ideology B in which the actions and thoughts of the individual are completely controlled is North Korea. These totalitarian societies can result from democratic institutions as well. Indeed, Hitler and his Nazi Party came to power after the 1932 German Presidential Election in which the Nazi Party garnered more than 30% percent of the nationwide vote.

So, there are the ideological extremes. On one hand, we have a utopian world in which all people live in peace through individual self-restraint and virtue, and on the other hand, we have a dystopian world in which society controls all individual behavior, including actions and thoughts, through external restraint on the individual by way of a totalitarian state. This dystopian world is most aptly demonstrated by George Orwell’s 1984. The reality is that we live somewhere on this spectrum between the extremes, and I will allow readers to draw their own conclusions as to where we live presently. Regardless of the point of beginning, it is my firm belief that our actions should always move us toward Ideology A rather than toward the complete external control of the individual in Ideology B, because there is no true happiness without freedom and liberty.

Law Enforcement Regulate Public Behavior

Using this ideological framework, let us turn our sights to local government and explore how local government affects our location on this spectrum between the utopian and the dystopian extremes. First, our local government controls public behavior by enforcing punishment for those guilty of committing crimes on victims. We have criminal codes which protect the public and society as a whole from individual criminal behavior. The basis for criminal codes is readily apparent in the court filings in any case. In California, criminal complaints against perpetrators of crimes are brought, not by the individual victim but by the “People of the State of California,” because while crimes are indeed improper acts committed against an individual victim, we view them as improper acts upon all of society and are controlled accordingly.

While our local government restrains criminals from hurting individuals in society, our local government also seeks to control private individual behavior through regulation. The use of marijuana is a good example of such regulation. This criminal framework detailed above precludes the idea of punishing a victimless crime hence the current push to move us to discard regulations related to the use of drugs by the individual. The argument is that, so long as the individual commits no criminal acts against others, his private conduct should not be criminalized or regulated. Such deregulation actually moves us toward the Ideology A side of the spectrum and is founded upon the idea that man can self-regulate and restrain his own behavior. 

So Called “Experts” in Local Government Regulate Private Behavior

While local government decriminalizes some private behavior, such modest movement towards Ideology A is vastly outweighed by local government’s massive lurches to the dystopian end of Ideology B. Federal and local government are dominated by an ideology which posits that “experts” in society are better equipped to regulate individual behavior than the individual himself. This ideology is antithetical to Ideology A. In order to adhere to this “expert” driven ideology, one must have a highly negative view of man, and as such, the “expert” driven ideology, which dominates local government, is based upon the idea that man lacks the ability to take care of himself and for those around him.  

Because man cannot take care of himself or others as this “expert” driven ideology holds, a select group of “experts” must direct individual, private behavior based upon the “expert” knowledge of these selected leaders. As such, and while California and our local government seek to regulate public behavior, they also seek to highly regulate individual private behavior. Would you like to build a granny unit on your own property for your family members or in order to generate income for yourself and help alleviate the affordable housing problem? Would you like to paint the outside of your business bright yellow in order to attract business? Would you like to buy a new air conditioner for your house? For all these simple desires, local government permission from the local “experts” is required and difficult, if not impossible, to receive. 

California State Budget Equals Federal Budget of Russia with no Tangible Benefits to People

The California state budget nearly equals the federal budget for the entire country of Russia. Over the past 25 years, the budget for Nevada County has nearly quadrupled in size, exploding to about $368,000,000 annually.  With this exorbitant amount of money, has Nevada County solved the homeless problem? Affordable housing? Reduced crimes against the people? Hardly. Indeed, the homeless problem is worse, there is no affordable housing in Nevada County, and our community is less safe now than 25 years ago.

In order to demonstrate the success or failure of any ideology, one must first look at whether or not the people are happy. Is living by the direction of the local “experts” making us happier in California? Rather than lecture and attempt to sway opinion, I will simply pose some rhetorical questions for the reader to answer for themselves. Are you happier living in Nevada County, California than you were 25 years ago? Are your family and friends leaving you here and moving to Tennessee or elsewhere, because they were not happy here? Are they happier now that they left? In fact it is not only your friends leaving but a significant portion of the entire state. In 2020, California, for the first time in the state’s entire history, lost a congressional seat as a result of diminished population. Amazingly, our local government has managed to make the great State of California and bucolic Nevada County unhappy places.

The solutions to the woes of California and Nevada County and the happiness of the people are found, not in more of Ideology B and ever larger and expanding government regulation of the people by “experts” who believe that society is incapable of self-regulation but, in a return to Ideology A and the radical ideas of the goodness of man and his self-sufficiency through which man can live a happier and freer life. Indeed, California led the nation in the movement towards Ideology A in the 1960s. Before you follow your family and friends out of the state and while you are still here, be vigilant in choosing your local leaders. Ignore the labels and ask yourself, does this local candidate lean toward Ideology A or Ideology B. If the candidate is not calling for a return towards Ideology A and supports an ever more “expert” driven ideology, he or she is not worth your vote. Thomas Jefferson once said, “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate objective of good government.” Keeping this axiom in mind and if we desire California and Nevada County to once again become the happy place of our youth, we must advocate for a government which leans toward Ideology A and one that seeks to maximize our happiness.