Last week WCAX featured Stand Your Ground Vermont , a citizen gathering in Rutland to battle street crime, with the city police down three officers and the prosecutors complaining how their hands are tied. This is a very encouraging report.  I hope it leads to a Rutland Guardian Angels group.

From The Dispatch news service November 6:

"Late last month, a man killed 18 people and injured 13 others in Lewiston, Maine. A common refrain in the wake of such tragedies is that “no one saw it coming,” but that’s typically not entirely true. Killers often have mental health issues and have threatened violence in the past, and this case was no different. The killer was an Army reservist, and the military had determined that he should not have access to a weapon or ammunition. An Army colleague had alerted the local police, who contacted the family but did little else…."

If you’re concerned about an America in crisis, and I am, here’s an issue working its way to the surface that is causing a big problem.

One of the ideas I have been interested in for the past fifty years is the clash between centralism and decentralism in human affairs. Many times in these broadcasts I have disparaged centralized systems for beating up on ordinary people and their little civic platoons, as Edmund Burke called them.

Last summer the Vermont Public Service Department took a poll on Vermonters’ views on energy. Rob Roper summarized the findings thus: “the kind of energy policy most Vermonters are looking for is affordable, reliable, and with the least possible amount of impact on our natural environment, such as forests, rivers, and wildlife. We don’t particularly care so much if it’s renewable, reduces carbon emissions, or is produced in state – albeit those attributes might be considered nice.”

If you watch the Story TV Channel evenings you’ve surely seen an intense advertisement for the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU. Its actors tell us how the ACLU is fighting for our rights and urges us to send a contribution right away.