Thursday, August 09, 2007
Big Government at the Local Level
I don't blog politics much. It's not that I am apathetic, but rather that I'm quite ambivalent and distrustful of political parties and their agendas of power - I think most politicians may start their careers with the best of intentions, but inevitably get sucked into the gamesmanship and insider dealings far too easily. I'm totally not ready to jump into the 2008 presidential election coverage yet - wake me up when two things happen: 1) We're LESS THAN twelve months away from election day. 2) There are less than about four viable candidates from each party to choose from. As things stand now, I'm pretty sure that everyone from Hillary Clinton to George Clooney to Don Imus to my soon-to-retire mailman are in the race.
I remember the days when the Republican party was all about reducing the size of government. Nowadays, of course, our Republican president has developed a juggernaut government.
At the local level here in Seattle, we're facing some silliness at The Purple Door with the city. I won't bore you with details, but we've recently had to respond to a complaint filed by one irrational, disgruntled community member. The complaint refers to a city ordinance that is entirely redundant to other laws and ordinances, has no definable community service purpose, and requires a city office of bureaucrats to monitor and police. Oh, by the way, it's quite possible that the ordinance is straight up unconstitutional. We're talking violation of the freedom of assembly and religious practice here - pretty basic, obvious stuff. One of the city staffers we've talked to about this issue told us that
they recently shut down a house church based on this ordinance. Wha? Come again? Yep.
I'm NO FAN at all of the Christian groups that sue government because a school official won't let a kid wear a "God hates liberals" t-shirt to school. So I'm not looking to call them anytime soon. But this case actually sounds like something that those godless, left-wing-extremist, gay-and-lesbian-loving wackos at the ACLU would take on. Not like I've got lots of time or energy to fight this one out in a courtroom. But we're pretty frustrated at this point.
Well, enough whining for one day. Maybe this will all blow over quickly and we'll look back and laugh at all this. Maybe.
Labels: politics, Seattle, the purple door