The Republican Party: Pro Property Rights and Pro Big Brother?

In my staunch Republican city, a stealth property rights group was born in the 1980s that involved developer/lawyers & landowner/judges. The group is still very much active but even though it includes state legislators in its monthly barbecues, you never hear anything about them in the local paper. Very odd that so many movers and shakers come to their get togethers, yet few new arrivals to this area even know it exists, unless they get invited through business or political connections.

Anyway, a few years ago, they must have been outed because they do what Republicans do when they get found out. They get belligerently in your face. On the outskirts of town they now have a huge billboard that proudly announces that this city has a pro Property Rights group.

What I find incredibly inconsistent, is that this city also has tiny little cameras mounted on the overhead streetlights. They're aimed at the oncoming traffic, not on the side where you'd expect them to be if they were just there to trigger some sensor. And I thought to myself, how odd is it for a Republican city to be against government when it comes to their own private property, but paranoidly uses government to monitor everybody else's activity? Is that what the Republican party is all about?

Anyway, that's what I thought when I read this article about cameras on the streetlights because we've had them already for at least a year:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060416/ap_on_re_us/eyes_on_the_city

Power's only inherently evil when someone else is holding it.