What I Would Have Said at the Candidate Forum, Question 8

 Some of you may know that I filed for Lt. Governor as an independent in an effort to advance a lawsuit by Neighbors of Arkansas against the unjust changes made in the law in 2013. These changes make it harder to get on the ballot as an independent. I will not be on the ballot as part of the remedy, but I remain confident that the law will soon be thrown out as unconstitutional. Similar laws have in the past, and there is no way there can be “equal protection” under the law when one's access to the ballot can be made harder every time one attempts to access the ballot outside of the two parties whose misrule has so harmed our nation.

During that process, before it was clear that our (three of us sued as candidates, the other two for local offices) being placed on the ballot was not going to be a part of the remedy, I held myself out as a candidate. I even got invited to a forum. One co-hosted by the El Dorado Chamber of Commerce and the Union County NAACP. This forum is to occur on September the 30^th. Since I went to the trouble to answer the questions (in case access to the ballot this cycle was still an option) I thought I might as well share my answers with you. With that set up, here are the questions which will be asked at the forum tonight and how I would have answered them. If you don't think the system is broken, compare how I would answer them by how they are being answered by the candidates that the system is offering you.....

Question 8...

Violent crimes are increasing, is there a proactive measure that can be initiated during your term in office?

NICIC.Gov says: The crime rate in Arkansas (2011) is about 34% higher than the national average rate. It is higher than any state except South Carolina. Property crimes account for around 89% of the crime rate in Arkansas which is about 33% higher than the national rate. The remaining 11% are violent crimes and are about 39% higher than other states.

As I studied and researched in order to give your question a proper answer I tried to find a common thread. What did Arkansas and South Carolina, the two states where apparently there is less respect for private property and person, have in common? What is the common thread? Then I remembered the GOP presidential debate in 2012. Ron Paul was booed by an audience of people who claimed to be Christians. His offense was that he cited the Golden Rule. There was a lot of hypocrisy in that room that night, and there is nothing more corrosive to moral character than hypocrisy. We will never have enough cops and guns and prisons to restrain a population which is without moral inspiration.

This ties into everything else I have been saying about the way things have been done in Arkansas. The people running the show have set a very poor moral example for everyone else. When people see the powerful getting whatever they can get no matter how they get it, it makes them want to do the same. They may not be powerful enough to enlist the government to help them loot like the insiders do, so they use the tools that they have. If you want them to act better, you need the people running the show to act better.

When people are in Little Rock trying to form coalitions to loot everyone else, how can you complain when people on the street form a coalition to loot everyone else? The upper crust of one town puts on their suits and ties and goes to Little Rock and tries to talk the legislature into using government force to take money from other towns and give it to them. They don't call it robbery. They call it “economic development.” Street crime merely cuts out the government middle man. When thugs pin you against the wall and take your wallet, its not robbery. For them and their family, its “economic development.” The answer is not in any of these idiotic program proposals, the answer lies in the human heart. It's a question of moral inspiration and it starts at the top.

If you elected Mark ( a spokesman could have stood in for me) I guarantee you that he would help you set the moral example that we need. Need I say. Because you can't build enough prisons or hire enough cops to control a population without moral inspiration.

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Mark Moore is a proponent of a philosophy of government known as "Localism".  In the end, it is either going to be globalism or localism, because no other view of government can protect its population from globalism.   To learn more, check out Mark's book "Localism, a Philosophy of Government."