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Show * there would be no room for despair. We must break sharply with the past. It’s time to work like hell to right the system. We've been buffaloed and boogered long enough. All officials must know that it’s morally wrong and an ethical crime to withhold vital information from us. It’s our government, =~ it’s our records. To make democracy work requires the widest spread of intelligence. Otherwise ignorance lends itself to the forces that mold public opinion. It has been said that a person's judgement cannot be better than the information on which it is based. So let’s demand that administrators lay the necessary facts and information on the table for all to study, warts It works. and all, controversial or not. People would then gain a base on which to make wise It took President Roosevelt and a horrid war to set the stage for better times. And in decisions. one of his famous Fireside Chats, he made a profound statement: I have to agree with Thomas Jefferson when he said that “a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” “The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong And the great psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, wrote that emotion was the chief source enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong of becoming conscious. That there "can be no transforming of darkness into light and of enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over apathy into movement without emotion." its government." Pray tell, may a little emotion and rebellion save us yet. to sink their roots. So the work continues in the hands of the old guard. And to loosen the tight grip from these cobwebs of antiquity a pinch bar or sledge hammer is often necessary. Having come to this world in the summer of 1929 just before the stock market crash, and living on through the years of the great depression, I experienced the dreadful trials of my parents. We were about to lose it all. A third of Americans were soon out of a job and a fourth of the nation’s farmers lost their land. We scrambled for ways and means which would preserve us. There was no time then for a bleak outlook or periods of apathy as we all fought for survival. Hard work and cooperative efforts erase feelings of apathy. There it is. The people must be informed in order to be strong. Francis Bacon, once wrote that "Knowledge is power!" This relates in someway, does it not, to the slogan “Power to the people?" How inadequate those phrases seem in San Juan County. The county continues on in a provincial world of its own. Power is in the hands of certain leaders, not in the hands of the people. I’ve been reading Gerry Spence’s fine new book, Give Me Liberty, in which he goes around asking people if they are free. He concludes that we are not and he tells us why we have become the "New American Slaves": "We have been trained not to look, like old horses with blinders affixed to our bridles. We have been trained not to think, not to speak, not to protest. We have been trained since we were children to believe that silence is golden." MOAB’S STEAK PLACE And I might add that we have not been given the bare facts necessary to make wise decisions or even to protest bad decisions. Spence graphically describes the problems as: Don't look "an entanglement of megacorporations on the one hand and an omnipowerful national government on the other, each stuck to the other like a pair of copulating dogs, each unable to move without dragging the other behind it, each dependent upon the other, reservations Why not? Are we having YOU for dinner? so nervous. We are taking for ne the other, but welded to the other in a dissolute enterprise." November How in the hell did we get in this predicament? We've dug our own graves because we've failed to select the right people. But Thomas Jefferson cautions us: "Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct." And often that "rottenness" of which he speaks begins by the withholding of essential material. And remember us for your Xmas Commissioners Ty Lewis and Bill Redd, and planner Ed Scherick, must know that this Parties too. is not their exclusive domain. Aren’t they servants of the people? Maybe these officials, in living their myth, are protecting us from something more dire. Maybe they think as Descartes: "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, and in much wisdom is much grief." Peoples of the world have raised the level and average of knowledge beyond any age in history. We have been born with a rich heritage given-us by the minds of centuries. I 1393 N. HIGHWAY 191 STATE legacy to us is the question. They have that duty. : We tend to respond in stereotyped ways, but can we not develop that excitement of innovation—a new adventure every year? We can meet those challenges by enlisting energetic and creative individuals to work together to use this past knowledge. Then surely, www CLIFFS Thompson SERVING DINNER NIGHTLY (435) 259-5201 wish that each person could access the universities, libraries and museums that holds the intellectual and artistic treasures of the human race. Just how our leaders transmit that BOOK 26th from 3 to 8PM. aU ee. m HOMESTEADS Springs, Utah Call Janie Tuft at 259.7488 In the last issue...Hlere she came. And now.... There she goes. The California Zephyr &6 Days Gone By TWENT Y-FIVE |