Sleepy Towns

2000-12-6 11:13:00

Jennifer, I appreciate your sincere questioning and seeking for clarification. If two people who have a difference of opinion seek with sincerity to reach common ground there is a good chance they will, especially if done through the soul.

Jennifer writes:

"I have been to New York and California which are major cities of international significance with greater multicultural composition, unlike Idaho which strikes this outsider as a sleepy backwater by comparison because it is relatively unknown outside the USA and probably gets far fewer visitors from other countries. So already this is a significant difference."

JJ:

I grew up in a rural area of Idaho which I must admit was a sleepy backwater place. I myself made up two percent of the population of the town of Letha. My friend Wayne's dad owned half the town and he was a poor man.

However, Boise where I live now is quite sophisticated in many ways. We are headquarters of Micron Technology which is the largest computer chip manufacturer in the Country and soon the world. It definitely has the most advanced methods of manufacturing chips which allows it to compete with the cheap labor abroad. It was started through financing from J. R. Simplot a local potato farmer.

We are headquarters for research, development and manufacturing of HP Laser Jet Printers.

This town is always seeking to import more engineers because of all the computer related manufacturing and development.

On a non-technical note, we are headquarters for a number of large corporations including Albertsons Grocery chain, which is soon to be the largest in the United States.

My point is Boise, which has been one of the fasted growing cities in the country, is not a backwoods place. On the other hand, you can find a greater number of sleepy backwater towns in California than you can Idaho. This is also there case in New York State to a lesser degree. There are a larger number of sleepy farm towns in both of these states than there are in Idaho. Overall I would say that the cultural differences are not great enough to account for the tremendous difference in violent crime.

It does seem, however, that about half the murders that we hear about happening here are committed by some crazed person from out of state, often California.

Instead of attempting to prove that gun control increases crime, let us turn this around and state that an increase in the freedom to bear arms rarely results in an increase in crime. Now, if this is the case, why should we yield up a precious freedom (as all freedom is precious) to solve a problem that does not exist?

The greatest evil which has existed on this planet has not been advanced by people with evil intentions or lust for blood, but by people with good intentions.

Djwahl Khul tells us that disease is a distorted reflection of divine possibility. Even so it is with disease among humanity itself. People see an idea they consider good and seek to implement this idea of good through the restriction of the freedom of others. I recently cited the example of the old Soviet Union.

He who does not like guns seeks to take away the freedom of others to use them.

He who does not like abortion will seek to restrict the freedom of others to obtain one.

He who does not approve of drinking alcohol or taking certain drugs will seek to restrict the freedom of others to use them.

He who thinks others are negligent in fastening a seat belt will seek a law to force then to buckle up.

A lot of causes that unnecessarily restrict freedom sound very benevolent but the hidden result is always a good intention turned into a more negative result than if things were just left to educating the people of the ideal good and letting them make up their own minds.

Every war that has ever been fought was initiated with the idea that good should be forced upon the invaded nation. Never is war started with the idea of making things worse, but to promote the good.