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Besides, this was a movement that said a lot of things I agreed with. While genuine disagreement is perfectly understandable, a philosophy containing contradicting opinions - advocating less government spending while supporting the expanding military budget and the empire it finances - is a target of opportunity. While there seem to be few tea partiers who care their ideology might be intellectually unsound, some can provide a reasoned argument. Those people often become thought leaders; they are the ones I’m looking for.

Going to any rally seeking reasonable conversation probably makes no sense, so I was prepared for some dirty looks. My sign read on one side “IS THE WAR ON TERROR BIG GOV’T? JUST ASK AN IRAQI OR AN AFGHANI!” with a link to collateralmurder.com. On the other side I fashioned a Gadsen style design reading, “DON’T TREAT ON ME / UNLESS I’M AFGHANI OR IRAQI / END THE EMPIRE!” The signs were not designed to find people who agreed with my positions on the conflicts, obviously.

Soon enough when I got into the crowd, I had people looking at my sign. However, most people were pretty standoffish about it. They were content to ignore it, which after all is always the most effective resistance to any argument. I can’t compete with disciplined minds.

Pretty soon I a younger gentleman approached me about my sign. He had some pointed questions for me at first, but once I answered them - framing them in terms of the Constitution and budgets - he lightened up and got thoughtful. We started talking about how tragic the military’s heavy hand is, and he seemed genuinely puzzled by the problem. I can respect that; I simply gave him my point of view coupled with some observations about conservatism he seemed receptive to. We used his remark that he’s more of a Buckleyite to jump off into a conversation I sincerely enjoyed. As the rally got underway, a chant of USA started. My new friend just looked at me and rolled his eyes. Later, when they played “Proud to Be an American”, he remarked on the cliche.

As we were talking, an older woman approached me and asked me about my sign. I made the same argument about military spending, but she was much more combative. She made an offhand comment about how she thought the sign was “anti-tea party” (whatever that means) but I calmly stated what I thought was a conservative position and explained the contradictions in hers. While this slowed her down, she still persisted in attacking me. When I explained that my opposition to big government extended to foreign aid of Israel, she quickly wrapped up and left. The obvious implication was that I was an anti-semite. I was surprised how little it bothered me.

While the young conservative and I were discussing the encounter, she returned and offered a defense of Israeli interventionism on a scriptural basis. My retort focused on my tax liability for her beliefs. I finally got through to her, and she agreed to disagree. That’s a satisfactory conclusion for me - instant conversion does not redound to the credit of the mind thusly won.

The others who approached me were respectful. One lady said she didn’t want any innocent Afghanis or Iraqis to be oppressed. I simply pointed out the facts of the Collateral Murder video. When during the course of my argument I pointed out that soldiers do an enormously difficult job, she interjected, “And thank God they do it!” departing swiftly. Quick exits from conversation were common.

I ran into several people I knew from the Ron Paul campaign, and even a lefty friend undercover in a journalistic capacity. A few asked about the url on my sign. Donna Holt gave a great talk on behalf of Virginia Campaign for Liberty focusing on the sovereignty bills she played a pivotal role in getting passed. However, most of the speakers I found lackluster; they fanned the flames, quoted the Constitution, but even when they waxed intellectual they didn’t seem grounded. So much emphasis is placed on social programs that the most oppressed in our society rely on. I always admired Paul’s refusal to place welfare programs on the chopping block automatically, as he prioritized the end of the empire as the best place to cut costs.

I left before the event ended; nobody else was talking. It was definitely good practice reaching out to people whom I don’t normally mix with, and I appreciate the civility of almost everybody there. Indeed, many took pictures of my sign, so hopefully the messages will endure. And it’s always better to find out for yourself than to trust other people’s views!

More at springhillrva.org.

There are many reasons to oppose this scheme. Governments like city council have too often used taxpayer-financed carrots to entice developers into making precisely the bad decisions that led to an oversupply and crash in the real estate market. If the project fails, will these City Council members be around to reimburse the taxpayers for either the stimulus money or the project tax revenue we lost by financing this? No, they’ll be several years out of office by then, in all likelihood. Let’s not insult citizen intelligence with pledges of accountability, now.

Remember: if the developer will not even risk his or her own money to fully fund the venture and its expected tax bill, he or she is implicitly attesting to his or her opinion that the risk outweighs the benefits. By giving this stimulus money to the developers, we are betting that city council knows better than industry professionals how to judge whether developments will be profitable and successful. Granted, these professionals were usually awful at predicting the crash of the last years, but is it likely that politicians even less informed in the area will make a better choice?

This is corporatism, pure and simple: an alliance between private business interests and government to shape the laws and lives of its constituents in ways that promote a particularly narrow and undemocratic agenda. The best case scenario is this: politicians get more tax money to spend, while the private developer gets a lot more money to spend. No guarantee that we - the people actually living here - will benefit at all.

In fact, any increased revenues will probably be handed out to special, connected interests. How do I know? Well, because that’s how taxpayer money is being used right now. The council does not inspire confidence in taxes actually doing anything substantive besides fueling more and more speculative development.

It’s important to realize that the entire project, from its beginning, has been contested by residents. That a neighborhood has fought against different incarnations of this project for years should rule out any applicability of stimulus funds to this project. Appropriating money not directly collected by the city is just a way to bypass citizen oversight and hide corruption that may be involved. Stimulus money should be used only in an uncontroversial manner that clearly benefits the general welfare.

This is all on top of the fact that we just learned of a new fire station being built on the edge of our neighborhood. We’re already losing part of Canoe Run Park to another stimulus-driven project. Maybe right now isn’t the best time to be handing out money for yet more development in this small, vulnerable neighborhood?

It should be remembered that this development negatively impacts the character of a designated historic neighborhood. Residents sacrificed a lot of autonomy about their property to protect it. If I want to put up a picket fence, it takes two months of filling out forms, putting together a case, and begging for approval. But you want to throw up condos on the river? Please, help yourself to the city treasury. If historic neighborhood designation is to have any meaning, it needs to apply to everybody.

How good of a neighbor will somebody be if they have to be induced by millions in free money to even consider building near you? We in Springhill are trying to revitalize our neighborhood after thirty years of neglect by the same body now threatening us. That City Council can only see imagined future tax revenue - even as it empties its pockets to get the shovels ready - speaks to the poverty of vision in our city government.