My last post was that of a Martian hovering in earth orbit, unseen. This is a view through a microscope. As I walked my dog today, I began to think about the city where I live, Hamilton, Ontario and about other cities I know something of – to whit: Windsor, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario; Kingston, Ontario; New Richmond, Wisconsin. Unlike our national government and to a lesser degree our provincial government, these cities are generally well governed and well run. I don’t mean perfectly as I am both an historian and a Christian who knows as an historian and believes as a Christian, that this is an imperfect, even broken world. We can only try, but never attain perfection.
Given that parameter, pot holes are repaired, streets and sidewalks are usable; electricity functions, sewers carry away waste to treatment plants which also work; clean water arrives by pipes into our homes; transit is efficient and regular; parks abound; taxes for all this are carefully controlled and used. If something breaks, city crews come out to repair the problem efficiently; politicians are much more trustworthy and reliable than those at provincial and especially the federal level. Municipal politicians and employees actually work to keep the city functioning and even improving. And I must not forget the police and firefighters without whom no city could function well. Federal and provincial politicians are in the business of enforcing their ideologies on citizens and are also in the business of telling us whoppers of lies to get to their ideological goals. Municipal politicians work for the citizenry that elected them.
Again, I emphasize they make mistakes; some indeed may be corrupt, but rarely; many have their ideologies which do not mix with their civic work (only when they decide to move up to provincial or federal politics, can one see their ideology). There are fights over whether to build something here or there or allow something to expand or contract, and often decisions must be made that will annoy some and please others. But I cannot say that they ignore the citizenry or that they attempt to impose an ideology on their citizens.
Would that our federal and provincial governments have the same concern and left their other ideas aside. Alas, they don’t.
An Historian looks at the West 