Last updated on March 5, 2023
I’m writing this article to hopefully combat what I see as a dangerous tendency among many people, that of inherently distrusting politicians, but then believing they are your friend just because they take a public stance you like.
In Coos County, we currently have a situation where two of the three County Commissioners refuse to stand up for the rightful liberty of the people. One (John Sweet) is a RINO. The other (Melissa Cribbins) is a progressive-lite. So, we are left with just one (outnumbered) Commissioner in Bob Main who seems to be on our side. He signed the letter written to the Governor demanding local control, he was the only one who voted against following the new indoor mask mandate and he was the only one to remain to listen to his constituents after the other two adjourned the last meeting.
People on our side are DESPERATE to have someone in office take their side. So desperate that any little sign of support will get them to disregard that little voice in their head that keeps saying, “never trust a politician”. When I walked into last night’s Citizens Restoring Liberty and saw Bob Main sitting at the back, my “politician radar” went off. You see, politicians rarely do anything for fully altruistic reasons, there must be some benefit for themselves. Bob knows this and might even admit it in private.
The other thing politicians do, is to place all their solutions within the frame of government or “the law”. If you attended the meeting last night, you might have heard several people ask Bob for advice on how to fight the current mask mandates, lockdowns, etc. He gave two main answers which were:
- Statewide Initiative Petitions (to amend the Oregon Constitution)
- Large, well-organized groups protesting at the State Capitol (i.e. Timber Unity)
You’ll notice that one of these is a political process and the other depends on a majority of state legislators actually listening to a minority group. I am not opposed to initiative petitions, but the two items we would like to change (Governor’s emergency powers and school choice) are ABSOLUTELY SACROSANCT to the party that controls this state. Bob is deluding you to think that Oregon will EVER vote to change those items. He is asking you to waste thousands and thousands of hours collecting signatures for a near impossibility. I hate to be the debbie-downer in this situation, but we need to face the harsh reality, Oregon (as a whole) is completely controlled by Progressives.
Bob’s other idea involved a large group similar to Timber Unity. He kept repeating that Timber Unity had 15,000 people descend on the capitol with a giant caravan of log trucks. They sure did, so here is my question to everyone. What exactly did Timber Unity accomplish? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Everyone needs to go back and study the history leading up to the Declaration of Independence. You know the line about a “redress of grievances”? The people of the 13 colonies had tried to use the political process. They tried to protest. In fact, they went a lot further with their protests than any of us. When all that failed, they wrote the Declaration of Independence to basically say, “we tried to reason with you and you wouldn’t listen, so here is the stick”. Every single person who signed that document knew that the political process had completely failed them. They knew the colonial Governors were nothing but politicians who answered only to the King. Their solution was to refuse to play the game any longer.
With all that said, I need to clarify my position on local politicians. You should absolutely praise them when they stand with you, but you should never trust them, and no matter what good they do they MUST be held accountable for bad decisions. They are not your friends, they are your EMPLOYEES.
A politician is much like a firearm, a valuable tool when properly controlled, but a dangerous enemy when not. Commissioner Main can be used to help our cause, but do not let him take the reigns or manipulate you into fruitless endeavors.
-Matthew Wilbanks (Editor @ Dailyresister.com)
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