Click here to view the embedded video.

Plus, it’s educational! A little bit.

I developed this “back to basics” concept a few months ago for a different and perhaps surprising reason: I was considering running for City Council myself. A couple of local friends also encouraged me to consider the idea. I do a lot of analysis and discussion, of course, of City Council decisions and provide a different point of view.

Unfortunately, I can’t be the editor of the newspaper and serve on City Council. Well, in a purely technical sense I could, but my boss certainly wouldn’t keep employing me, and if I were a reader I wouldn’t trust any news stories about City Council if the main editor were a member.

So if I were to run for City Council, I would have to find another job. The problem, here, though, is that there really isn’t a whole lot in Barstow I’m qualified to do besides work at the newspaper. We journalists aren’t good for a whole lot once you get us out of our element.

The only other logical fit would be education, which would have been a problem. I have issues with the union-dominated, money-wasting operations of our public school systems. It would be hypocritical for me to promote smaller government and then turn around and live off the public dime as a school teacher. (This is assuming they’d have anything to do with me anyway)

So, being the market-loving libertarian I am, I realized that I’m pretty much where Barstow needs me to be. If I don’t have value as an employee in Barstow’s business market outside the newspaper, then obviously I should stay here. Whether the City Council would have been better or worse with me on board (assuming the idea I could have won) is a question that will remain unknown.

Though feel free to speculate in the comments.

Seriously though, I do want to add a little more insight to my attitude about the drug war. Libertarians are known for their attitude in favor of drug legalization. Also, and not entirely unrelated, many libertarians are perceived to be casual drug users.

I don’t touch drugs, at all. I rarely even drink alcohol. I want to make it clear that my attitude toward drug use is not based on some naive idea that drugs are not dangerous or a problem. My attitude is based on the belief that families and friends are better resources in helping deal with these problems than the government, and there’s a lot of information out there that backs up my view.

On a personal level, I’m a child of the drug war. I turn 37 on Monday, so it was interesting to me to notice that I’ve essentially lived my entire life in this fight. Drug use tore my family apart when I was a child. I don’t care to get into the details of it, but it was devastating. I know what drug abuse can do to people. Subconsciously, I’ve made many decisions about my life to make sure I never become one of those people.

But I also know what families can do. We put ourselves back together (well, really, it was my father’s hard work that did it). Government intervention did not play a role. If the government had gotten involved in this situation when it was at its worst, who knows what would have happened? I and my sister might have become wards of the state, and as difficult as things were, I can’t imagine such a turn of events working out better for me.

Strangely, this will be the first time I’ve actually gotten to see Barstow’s fireworks show. Something has always prevented me from going out there until this year.