Now a good friend of mine responded initially (although I think he may be rethinking this) by stating,
Rambo, isn't that proof that small town governments are even more corrupt? Kinda like this small town police officer? Your proving my point! Aren't u glad the Feds busted him? No, you want no outside help, no one to police the small town guys. Leave us alone!! You can't make this stuff up.
Now although he may be walking this back some, please notice the assumption that the average state educated and propagandize American citizen immediately responds. He appeals to a higher governmental authority! As if Rambo didn't already have enough trouble. Now let's centralize power even more.
Now I want to be clear. We all know about the tyranny of local communities. I remember reading one Supreme Court decision in which they made the same observation. But even the High Court didn't think that meant the Federal government should trump local governments in every way. As Jeffery Hebener states in his article,
Not only did small states constrain each one's predation by the competitive process among them, but within each realm the struggle for supremacy came to center around the assertion of rights. Representative bodies, religious communities, chartered towns, universities, etc., each claiming its rights, limited the power of the king. Eventually, private property rights came to be defined more in line with the nature of human persons and human action, leading to further gains in prosperity and liberty. Innovations in technology, organization, and institutions were permitted by right, giving rise to the distinctive features of capitalism: capital markets, joint stock companies, entrepreneurial activities, capital accumulation, and so on.[11]Yet my point is that today, most people have some kind of altruistic view of government. The more centralized it is, the better. Yet this is simply not true as has been demonstrated by libertarians and the article cited above. To put it simply, centralization does not improve economies or the arts or technology among other things, including the police!
In other words, why is granting a monopoly on centralized tyranny better? If one watches the movie, Rambo, I fail to see how the bigger government helped Rambo out? If you recall, the military shot a bazooka like bomb at him. Yet my friend later seems to see a problem that the movie asks, when he wrote,
If your local police is corrupt, and you hate central planning, who arrests the corrupt police?
An accusation brought to the State police and the chief that Rambo was being abused was responded by the character, Sheriff Teasle. Basically, he states if something bad is happening among his men, then the prisoner goes to him and the Sheriff fixes the problem. Now think about that. The very sheriff that arrested Rambo and gave him over to his underlings is now the one who wants the monopoly on authority. However, many today wish for an even more powerful and centralized monopolistic government to have this power. And pray tell me, who has authority over them? A world court?
To even ask these questions is anathema to a people that have been indoctrinated on centralized power/government. Yet it was not that long ago that the very Framers of our Constitution believed in nullification in order to protect itself from an ever growing centralized power as Tom Woods more than demonstrates here.
So as even my friend seems to see, the police that stole the thousands of dollars apart from any charges or trial, based squarely in a made up/artificial war on drugs [a war that is never meant to be won BTW] is bogus on some level.
So in conclusion, appealing to higher and more centralized governments as being the answer to small town tyrants is an answer that gives bigger governments even more monopolistic power. How this solves any dilemma can only be found in the modern mind.
