www.LaconiaDailySun.Com April 9th, 2008
To the editor,
The traditional Town Meeting is not a hiding place for backward antiquated thought. People, like Mr. Horne and Ms. Pam Finer are offering advice on improving Meredith’s government and some folks just don’t understand the advantages of SB-2. The public’s perception is that if truth has fair play it will always prevail over falsehood. The public, up to a point, is gifted with a charitable bent. But let us not be mistaken, through God’s grace they possess a mesmerizing charisma and charitable nature. They are forgiving until they become fed up with rhetoric which stokes up a controversy about how the town’s gentry know more than they. Mr. Obadiah Plainman 11 a recently resurrected gentlemen told me that one should listen carefully when the better sort of people tell you that they know more about what is good for you; this method of government leads to dictatorship and that can be upsetting. When a certain individual implies that the folk in the street are the mobs or the rabble, heads rise. Well I enjoy being and am proud to be the “rabble”. My breakfast friends enjoy being the “rabble for freedom” and detest hearing that there are folks out there that style themselves as a “better sort” or imply that the common folks are a stupid herd. The common citizenries, the “poor ordinary folk” work hard to meet their responsibilities and pay their property taxes. Cantankerous Yankees get rankled up when someone proclaims themselves to be of the better sort and look at the rest of their neighbors with contempt. Some folks don’t like it when others put on aristocratic airs. We are allergic to snobbery and are proud to be a part of the rabble and a Plainman. It was the “Rabble In Arms” or Continental Army under Gen. Washington that threw out the army of George III, the English king when he trampled on the rights of the American people. New Englanders have the spirit of rugged individualism and are fiercely supportive of their community. Self-reliance and civic involvement is part of Meredith and American character. Meredith will prosper if you permit the people to be heard. We can not fear the people. Give the little guys the credit they deserve. They will involve themselves in the community if they can. Note that our Town Manager holds selectman workshops meetings at the inappropriately, outrageous hour of 4 p.m. and selectman meetings at 5:30 p.m.. When you want to keep the people uninformed that is a way to do it. Hardly a time that the working people can attend to involve themselves in government. Why not hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. so that the average guy can get home after a commute, eat, shower and go to the public meeting and enjoy the beneficial consequences. It is no wonder that we hear defamatory protestations by a “well bred man” with a Ph.D., who makes scurrilous comments in the Sun and has little esteem or affection for the straight talking plain folk wanting them to fall in line. If SB-2 will shake up the local establishment then so be it. Perhaps some folks ought to sacrifi ce some of their vanity and become enthralled in a democracy that includes the right to vote. The Town Meeting is inconsistent with true liberty. The no-nonsense people have a right to be displeased rejecting those who hunger for personal privilege. We have recommitted ourselves to freedom and will recreate a great new awakening in democracy. I sense a great emotional tide of revivalism that is sweeping the Lakes Region. It sweeps away “pious fraud” and reviews the doctrine of democracy and the right to vote. There was a Great Awakening in America in the 1730s generated by the likes of Jonathan Edwards (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”). Edwards wanted to recommit America to the spirituality of Puritanism. Some voters in Meredith want to recommit to democracy, liberty, tolerance, individual merit, civic virtue, rationality and the right to vote by secret ballot. With undisguised pride and optimism I still say “Power to the People” and “Uraahhh” to Mr. Horne and Ms. Pam Finer for bringing to our attention the importance of the diligent, unpretentious, “self-created and self-willed man” who believed in reason and threw off hateful malicious oppressors and bigots. The Plainfolk recognize and want better representative government, a right to vote at a time of their choosing and conveniently by secret ballot. VOTE YES FOR SB-2.
Richard Gunnar Juve
Meredith
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