One of the three theological virtues that Christians uphold is hope – hope for all things religious to exist and turn out for the best in eternity. That’s my layman’s take on the virtue; a theologian would probably say it differently. Without a doubt, most Americans are raised in a Christian ethical framework. Just as faith, hope and love infuse our theology, those virtues contribute to every other American milieu. One raised in America simply cannot avoid them.
This is a long way around of saying that when I go to a night meeting of the leadership of the two most powerful governing bodies in Elbert County, I attend with a measure of hope.
Now, my detractors will claim that I hope for a train wreck, that I bring my video camera out of a prurient interest to capture scenes of liberals with their figurative pants down around their ankles. That’s not true. No one needs to see those flowery liberal undies. I’m programmed to hope for the best. Train wrecks make me uncomfortable. I bring the camera because it’s far more accurate than my memory, and I value accurate history.
As a former small businessman in Elbert County, one of my keen interests is jobs and economic growth. I always hope for talk about these things. This night, jobs and economic growth got crowded out by:
- need to kill the deer inside the town limits of Elizabeth
- need to scrape money off of oil & gas development to build county water projects
- need to write more grant proposals
- need to have a county-wide bike path
- need to have a county-wide horse trail system
- need to get more shoppers to come to Elizabeth from Franktown
- need to have eco-tourism out in the Bijou because it’s so like going to the mountains
- need to build the 2nd Running Creek crossing at the south end of Main Street
- need to raise taxes
My hopes for real economic proposals turned to despair. I don’t think any of the people running the two most powerful organizations in Elbert County have a clue about how to set conditions favorable to private sector growth and job creation. If they do, they sure didn’t mention it tonight.
B_Imperial