SPEAK OUT!

Take Back Sheboygan County--Why?

Art DeJong

Background

Several hundred years ago our nation’s founders established a completely new system of government. Because every society is too complex to be centrally micro-managed and power always corrupts, governments that used the old top-down systems had short, chaotic lives and usually died horrible deaths. (Communist and fascist dictatorships, monarchies, oligarchies). While these systems featured constant struggles for power with coups and countercoups, rioting, revolutions, and mass incarcerations and executions, the U.S. with its new system muddled along quite peacefully. What was its secret?

The secret was a system that carefully separated four types of government to enable citizens to govern from the bottom up, not top down. The first and most important part was the family, in charge of raising the next generation; the second, town and county elected boards that did most of the governing. The third, state government, dealt only with issues which couldn’t be handled locally, while the final, federal government, was just in charge of national defense, foreign policy, and relationships among the states. This new system worked so well that it became our country’s greatest export.

In recent years, however, Democrats, believing that they could run state, local, and even family life, in addition to foreign policy, took over the federal government and set out to control all four from Washington. The Democrat controlled media stopped paying attention to state and local government because governing now was to be done by Washington, not local citizens. State government and local boards were simply to enforce the policies of wise federal Democrats, they thought. Without media coverage they quietly began to take over local government. Few noticed the shift because the machinery was still in place; but now it was to be used to enforce the policies of federal Democrats, not the will of local people. They had reversed the system; bottom-up had become top-down.

But citizens started to notice that things didn’t seem to run well anymore. Was it nostalgia? They noticed that we were lurching from crisis to crisis, that we expected federal borrowing to pay our bills, that our cities were becoming warzones, that hordes were invading our southern border, and that weird “woke”, DEI, and transexual obsessions were showing up on local boards and in our suddenly failing schools. The media told citizens to calm down, explaining that federal failures were just minor glitches caused by the Covid, climate change, or Republicans. Soon, however, citizens could no longer ignore the chaos and started to look more closely at what was happening to our system of local governance. Local findings, found in takebacksheboygancounty.com, make for interesting reading, to say the least.

Conclusion

Hoping that federal politicians can save us is the root of the problem, not the solution. True, managing local organizations the size of Sheboygan County with its $180 million budget, the Sheboygan Area School District ($160 million), and the City of Sheboygan ($125 million) is not for the faint of heart, nor is the job of forcing the federal government to do its job of defending the country, not ruling it. But we have no other choice. Self-government requires that we do just that--take responsibility for ourselves, our families, and our local government. The alternative is for counties to drift down the path of obedience until we reach the end, the death of the great American Dream.

This spring we will elect all 25 members of the Sheboygan County Board of Supervisors, 5 out of 10 members to the Sheboygan Common Council, 3 out of 9 members to the Sheboygan Area School District Board, and dozens on various other boards throughout the county.

If you can help to save, or in some cases take back, local government by serving-- or if you know people who may be able to serve-- or if you are willing to help someone else campaign for office, please take that first step toward national recovery and contact Russ Otten at ottenruss@reagan.com or (920) 207-3894.

The clock is ticking
Nomination papers—December 1, 2023 to Jan 2, 2024
Spring Primary—February 20, 2024.
Spring General Election—April 2, 2024

Art DeJong, Sheboygan, WI