Yes...it is my opinion that when it comes to civil liberties they are at risk everyday in the small towns of America, because no one tends to be watching at that level

Yep...sounds like a parasitical humanoid to me!

It was his attempt to block me from getting the Mayor's Court records of a ruling regarding a confiscation of a classic car by the police department. Later when I pressed the matter again the page with that ruling was missing

True. What we really need is to go back to community-run education staffed by educational specialists, i.e. teachers. Specialization works in every industry where such specialization is allowed to earn a premium, and therein lies the principal problem (pun intended however one spells it) ! Teachers are not rewarded based on how parents perceive their efforts. There is currently no market-based economy in basic education because the bureaucrats have taken it over. Success in our educational system will only occur once Parents (primarily because the children are incapable of paying for their own education) are the ones who directly determine (through their Dollars) which teachers and institutions they are going to patronize with their hard-earned wealth. That means getting government out of the business of education entirely - a prospect that grows ever less likely as it is one of the foundational platforms of every Governor!

The sadness is that many parents are products of the "government youth camps" themselves. And as Liberty Belle suggests, home schooling can provide the solution, but not in a timely manner.

Civil Liberties/Rights involve a government and legal arguments. Natural Individual Rights originate with owning oneself and are yours regardless of government or society.
They are conflated and confused in order to impose government rules on deciding what they are and limitations on them. Big difference.

The home school movement; perhaps also promoting Montessori schools. And then, a gradual boycott.
Things have begun to change for the better in
that area already. I can remember when people
just didn't dare (at least in public) question
the desirability of the public schools; on the
media, someone would say "education", and it
seemed that everybody within earshot was ex-
pected to fall down and kowtow.
If someone didn't want to go to college, it was considered the job of everybody connected
with him to persuade him that he had to go, as if
it were necessary in order to save his soul. Not
nowadays.
I have seen change (and, believe me, I am
not a patient person by nature), from the way
things were 45 years ago.
One thing that can be done, on an individual
basis, is to teach phonics to children whom one
happens to know; bring in a Dr. Seuss book, and show a child how to put letters together and fig-
ure words out. This leads to confidence in one's
own ability to figure things out. This can be done
occasionally, in the presence of the child's par-
ents, often without monetary compensation,and
also sometimes even when the parents happen
to be religious. (Independence of thought can
eventually render it more likely that a child will
grow up to later adopt a more rational philosophy). --Sorry, I don't think it can be a-
chieved any time in the next 30 seconds.

No, we are in a sort of emergency situation now.
There is at present no ideal candidate. While having
some grave reservations concerning Cruz, I think
he is the best alternative available at this time. Trump seems to me like an incipient dictator.
Not to be repetitious, but he is no free-enter-
prise man, he has praised eminent domain,
bragged about his lack of principle, and even
said he could change his positions based on
(political?) circumstances. From his recent
comments on David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan,
he seems out to prove that he can get away
with anything.
But if we can get a decent (or at least half-
way decent) President in there with a Republican
-majority Congress, perhaps we will be able to
turn this country around and save it; at least
to dodge the present bullets, and then work on
doing a real conversion to a right philosophy.

A well armed, open-carry society gives a more genteel, civil society.

initially, the internet did that for us until the government figured out how to control it. Currently we escape sales taxes by buying stuff on the internet (except for amazon, which the government already captured). The NSA is making it impossible now to hide our transactions

Hmm, but it's a lot of work, still for a new author and one with limited knowledge of online promotions. It's taken me since 2012 to reach 110,000 downloads of my first book.
It's been a learning experience though.

Next one will go mainstream...if I ever get the damn thing done.

How is that "protection" working out for you?

We don't have a long time. At this rate the country is in for a major and deadly cataclysm within a few years. So now what?

I don't think there is any "versus". You have the inalienable right to live your life as you please except for infringing on the right of others to do the same or (provably) harming them.

Hahaha...yep, that's where our real rights and civil liberties first come from...so long as we learn civility...hahahahahah

Oh, I agree. I'm not trying to say alternate methods of dissemination shouldn't be tolerated. I'm just pointing out that these are the value-adds authors must do themselves when self-publishing. New authors rarely do it because they are so unknown they have no marketing base to work from: word-of-mouth is very difficult to achieve among authors even in today's ultra-connected world. Unless one has their book mentioned by a popular talk show, it is more likely to remain obscure. This is even more likely in the sci-fi/fantasy genre because the market is less than 1/10th the size than for popular fiction.

I attended a Writers of the Future Workshop and several very popular Sci-Fi/Fantasy authors including Rebecca Moestra, Kevin Anderson, Brandon Sanderson, Dave Wolverton and Eric Flint went through the whole process of publishing - including self-publishing. All of them - despite their fame - still recommended using a publishing house to get started.

Yet a number of popular books have not followed that path: Quarter Share series, Liaden series, and The Martian. These were all published online and word spread as to how good they were.

Jan

It starts with the parents. Everyone else is a secondary provider of education - even the schools. Principles are formed at home and principles determine how one approaches education.

The main value publishers still provide in this day is advertising and product placement. The actual publishing is secondary, but directly tied to creating demand for the product.

Was that a favorable opinion of his, beneficial to the towns people? or Was it a defensive posture because it took his power away from him.

That is key in determining a value creating conscious human being or a parasitical humanoid.
As I write often, it's all about conscience, those that have those that have not.

From my experience as a small town editor the fight for rights begins at the lowest level of government. I once had an eighth grade education level Mayor tell me the State Supreme Court rulings didn't apply in his town, when I was trying to obtain public records.

Yes and it was intentional...we must go underground on the internet...play their game!

Or perhaps an old fashioned newspaper and compete with the liberal rags.

How does one go about converting the population? The government youth camps, (public schools) have been at their trade for about 60 years and have been extremely successful at dumbing down folks. Any
peaceful change to the establishment system of public education is not likely.

Forgot to add the basic unit of government: Beyond one's own mind, there is the Anglo Saxon and Abrahamic idea of the family unit it self, then your neighbors...etc on up the line.