The Angry Exile: The states we're in.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Monday, 12 April 2010

The states we're in.

According to The Australian support for scrapping the state governments is rising as around four in ten now see them as the least effective level of government. Four in ten people may well have a point, but I wonder if a large part of that is because the states have ceded far too much power to the federal government in Canberra. It's harder for state level government to be effective when it's restricted either legally or financially or both by a layer of government above it. It's just as hard for the state level government to be truly answerable to its citizens when it can simply shrug and pass the buck up to the federal level. Small wonder several Australians I know have said they'd be quite happy to ditch the states altogether. A good look at Britain and its place in the EU should show them why this view is dangerously wrong. If you want your life run by a powerful and remote government and for the elected representatives from where you live to have less and less significance then sidelining state governments is the way to go.

Now federalism in itself is not a bad thing. Quite the reverse. There is a lot to be said for having a level of government that deals with borders and relations with other parts of the world, but leaves much of the internal running to a number of smaller governments who are elected and look after their own areas according to the wishes of the people who actually live there. A federation of competing states, which I'm told is what Australia was supposed to be, has the benefit of offering a la carte rather than Hobson's choice to citizens and business. If one state has high local taxes and/or poor services then it faces the prospect of people moving to another state with lower taxes and/or better services. If someone disagrees with a law in one state they may find that it doesn't apply somewhere else. In the US there are fifty options just at the state level, with county and city ordinances providing for even more variation. Want to be able to just pop out and buy a gun, no questions asked? Move to Vermont. Want to pay no sales taxes? Move to Alaska. Don't mind gun laws and up to 10.75% sales tax as long as it's warm? Try California. Even here in Oz where there are only six states and two territories it's possible to make choices about where to live based on how things are done. Take abortion for example - if you're pro-choice Victoria and the ACT are most in line with your views, New South Wales to a lesser extent. If you're opposed to abortion you'll find the toughest laws are in Queensland. Similarly if you think prostitution should be illegal then South Australia is probably for you, and you should certainly steer clear of the eastern states, especially NSW. Similarly certain taxes such as stamp duty and payroll tax vary from state to state, so if that's a hot issue then again you have a choice. On issues where there is no choice and the law, services, the tax regime, whatever is the same everywhere then this is usually because the decisions are being made one level further away from the citizens.

Choice means individuals get to live nearer to their ideals and preferences. Choice is good. Unfortunately choice is not what you get if you give the federal government too much power. I'm all for federalism - yes, even in Europe - but as a way to promote choice for all individuals in a federation, not to make everything the same. That is what the EU is doing wrong, and that is why 60 million plus people in Britain, not to mention the thick end of half a billion across the rest of the EU, are finding ever greater areas of their lives run by a remote central government that has little knowledge of their situation and even less reason to care. If that's the model Australians want then abolishing state governments is the way to go. But if it's the end of ivory towers and a move towards government that understands the local issues that matter to individual citizens then far from abolishing state governments Australians should be demanding they take on much of the federal government's roles and powers, and perhaps even to have some of that brought down to city or shire level. The problem of irresponsible and ineffective government is rarely improved by moving responsibility further away from the governed - the closer it is to the voters the more incentive there is to get it right.