Defund the police rally in Keene, NH
A socialist led organization the NH Youth Movement has been rallying its troops across NH this past week in an effort to get cities and towns to defund their police forces. However the rally that was planned for Keene didn’t go quite as the organizers expected.
While there isn’t a significant socialist presence in New Hampshire there are plenty of socialists in surrounding states that from time to time muster up the occasional rally in NH through the busing in of left wing extremists. This is particularly easy to do in Cheshire with the county neighboring Vermont and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts being right next door plus students from out of town attending Keene State College.
A few days before the rally was to occur the Keene City Republican Committee Chair Anne L. Farrington got wind of the socialists organizing of a protest and rallied her opposition country-folk to attend a counter protest for the same time and date.
“We want to show our support for law enforcement by coming out in strength to Back the Badge! The rally will be in Central Square tomorrow from 5:30pm-8:00pm. Please join us and bring friends who support our police!”
– Anne L. Farrington
This attempt at undermining the NH Youth Movement’s protest turned out to be as hilarious as one might have anticipated. Not so much because there were people shouting back and forth, but in that it appeared that the rally attracted all of one intentional NH Youth Movement member and another five or so socialists who just happened upon the Republican’s counter-protest.
To make for an entertaining afternoon a handful of libertarians got together to join in on the fun making a few signs in advance of the event, saying things both opposing sides would theoretically agree with and disagree with at the same time, like “Defund the pigs & end socialism”. Is it a socialist protest? Is it a right wing protest? Who knows, but certainly the passerbys didn’t quite follow what was going on with all the shouting from every side and direction. Both from protesters and from passing cars alike.
After numerous conversations with the right-wing nut jobs and left wing extremists it turned out that each side had a lot in common. Both the republicans and the socialists were in favor of socialist programs, but the agenda for which programs to fund and defund were different. The young socialists wanted to see free college tuition and police dollars redistributed to other social programs like housing the homeless. The counter protesters expressed a desire to continue funding social security and the police state.
What both the left and right failed to grasp was that the money doesn’t exist to fund all of these programs. The use of violence and the state to take money from the populous only works up to a point before that theft becomes so great that it undermines the revenues that can be generated. This leads to a failure of the programs both sides are trying to fund through theft.
Now this doesn’t mean that all parties can’t get what they want, but the means by which those funds are raised must not be through the violence that is the state. The overhead of state mandated programs is significant, the inefficiencies great, and the ever increasing amounts undermining to the objectives of both sides.
When the state gets involved a significant portion of the revenues generated are eaten up by the extraction of those funds from the populous and the overhead of management- not to mention corruption. When people are left to decide for themselves by comparison individuals pick the least expensive options which deliver the maximum benefit thus reducing costs and making such services affordable. Between competing offerings individuals can afford to pay for college when competition is left to run its course, government isn’t handing out ‘free’ money, and security (policing) doesn’t cost six figures per employee. Lets end all of the social welfare programs: Police, education, health care, social security, corporate welfare, and so on, and then hand back the financial resources to the people by eliminating the taxes that make these programs perform poorly as only then will those dollars stolen be best and most efficiently utilized.
Check out the entertaining video with left wing extremists, libertarians, and right wingers all competing for air time in or surrounding the public square.
