Bluefield almost set to close city jail (rules, room)
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BTW, I wouldn't put too much importance on the news about the jail. Almost all of West Virginia's city and county jails have been closed and prisoners placed under the custody of the State Department of Corrections in the 7 Regional Jails. For some reason, Bluefield has not yet closed their city jail. (according to that link).
I lived in Morgantown, but now I'm in the DC metro area.
Dear Mensa- Thanks for the reputation comment. Why would someone in Morgantown comment about a small town on the opposite side of the state?
But, to be fair to Cry, I remembered a quote about the positive and negative effects of law, and thought I'd quote it, to show that there IS an alternative to the laissez-faire, 'it's all about their upbringing' mindset.
A quote from Dr. RJ Rushdoony’s massive compendium of Biblical Law, his ‘Institutes.”
“It is important to call attention to an aspect of the law which makes it especially offensive to the modern mind: its negativism. To the modern mind, laws of negation seem oppressive and tyrannical, and the longing is for positive officials of the law. The best statement of a positive concept of law was the Roman legal principle: “the health of the people is the highest law.” This principle has so thoroughly passed into the world’s legal systems that to question it is to challenge a fundamental premise of the state. The Roman principle is basic to the American development, in that the courts have interpreted the “general welfare” clause of the U.S. Constitution in terms radically alien to the original intent of 1787.
A negative concept of law confers a double benefit: first, it is practical, in that a negative concept of law deals realistically with a particular evil. It states, “Thou shalt not steal,” or, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” A negative statement thus deals with a particular evil directly and plainly: it prohibits it, makes it unlawful. The law thus has a modest function; the law is limited, and therefore the State is limited. The State, as the enforcing agency, is limited to dealing with evil, not controlling all men.
Second, a negative concept of law insures liberty. If the commandment says, “Thou shalt not steal,” it means that the law can only govern theft: it cannot govern or control honestly acquired property. When the law prohibits blasphemy and false witness, it guarantees that all other forms of speech have their liberty. The negativity of the law is the preservation of the positive life and freedom of man.
But, if the law is positive in its function, and if the health of the people is the highest law, then the State has total jurisdiction to compel the total health of the people. The immediate consequence is a double penalty on the people. First, an omnipotent State is posited, and a totalitarian State results. Everything becomes part of the State’s jurisdiction, because everything can potentially contribute to the health or the destruction of the people. Because the law is unlimited, the State is unlimited. It becomes the business of the State, not to control evil, but to control all men. Basic to every totalitarian regime is a positive concept of the function of law.” – The Institutes of Biblical Law
So, one can see that the modern desire for the law to be as a Mother, instead of as a Judge, lies behind most of the specious and illegal legislation that suffuses the ‘Nanny State.’
We just see from different sides of the globe. I in the light, he..... well, you know.
I don't mean to continue on this topic, but I looked up that quote from my prior post, and found another section in Rushdoony's book, that makes the foregoing even clearer. I promise I'm done, now...
"But why not have a law that stresses the ‘positive value’ rather than its ‘negative value’? What harm can come from it. Again Rushdoony-
“If the law assumes a positive function, it is because it is believed that the people are a negative factor, i.e., incompetent and child-like. Then, in such a situation, responsible men are penalized with total liability. If a criminal, who is by his criminality an incompetent, enters a man’s house, he is protected in his rights by law, but the responsible and law-abiding citizen can face a murder charge if he kills the invader. A hoodlum can trespass on a man’s land, climbing a fence or breaking down a gate to do so, but if he then breaks his leg in an uncovered post-hole or trench, the home owner is liable for damages.
When the law loses its negativity, when the law assumes a positive function, it protects the criminals and the fools, and it penalizes responsible men. Responsibility and liability are inescapable facts: if denied in one area, they are not abolished but rather simply transferred to another area. If criminals are not responsible people but merely sick, then someone is guilty of making them sick. Under communism, this means the total liability of the Christians and capitalists as guilty of all of society’s ills. As totally liable, they must be liquidated.
Responsibility and liability cannot be avoided. If a scriptural doctrine of responsibility be denied, a pagan doctrine takes over. And if the scriptural negativism of the law is replaced with a law having a positive function, a revolution against Christianity and freedom has taken place. A negative concept of law is not only a safeguard to liberty but to life as well.” (ibid.)
I guess the question one must ask is, Do you want to follow the pagan law of Modernism/Communism/Alinksy, or the [Biblical] Law of Magna Carta/Western Civ/and Blackstone's commentaries- the latter law guide was one which every president in the first hundred years of our country knew of, and most likely, studied.
The next question (minus the guilt-mongering from liberals) to be asked is: During which era was the country better governed- as a whole? If "Responsibility and liability cannot be avoided," then I would rather treat criminals as rational adults, rather than as mental children- that seems unduly prejudicial, frankly. But that also makes them (criminals) responsible. So, which is it to be? Treating all like intellectually-deficient children, or treating all like grown men, responsible for their actions?
Frankly, we're back where I started, in saying charge higher fines to those who break the law, to deter behaviour counter to the community's best self-interest. If the law is unjust or immoral, then the community should decide that, not some bureaucrat whose own self-interest lies not with the community.
Dear Mensa- Thanks for the reputation comment. Why would someone in Morgantown comment about a small town on the opposite side of the state?
But, to be fair to Cry, I remembered a quote about the positive and negative effects of law, and thought I'd quote it, to show that there IS an alternative to the laissez-faire, 'it's all about their upbringing' mindset.
A quote from Dr. RJ Rushdoony’s massive compendium of Biblical Law, his ‘Institutes.”
“It is important to call attention to an aspect of the law which makes it especially offensive to the modern mind: its negativism. To the modern mind, laws of negation seem oppressive and tyrannical, and the longing is for positive officials of the law. The best statement of a positive concept of law was the Roman legal principle: “the health of the people is the highest law.” This principle has so thoroughly passed into the world’s legal systems that to question it is to challenge a fundamental premise of the state. The Roman principle is basic to the American development, in that the courts have interpreted the “general welfare” clause of the U.S. Constitution in terms radically alien to the original intent of 1787.
A negative concept of law confers a double benefit: first, it is practical, in that a negative concept of law deals realistically with a particular evil. It states, “Thou shalt not steal,” or, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” A negative statement thus deals with a particular evil directly and plainly: it prohibits it, makes it unlawful. The law thus has a modest function; the law is limited, and therefore the State is limited. The State, as the enforcing agency, is limited to dealing with evil, not controlling all men.
Second, a negative concept of law insures liberty. If the commandment says, “Thou shalt not steal,” it means that the law can only govern theft: it cannot govern or control honestly acquired property. When the law prohibits blasphemy and false witness, it guarantees that all other forms of speech have their liberty. The negativity of the law is the preservation of the positive life and freedom of man.
But, if the law is positive in its function, and if the health of the people is the highest law, then the State has total jurisdiction to compel the total health of the people. The immediate consequence is a double penalty on the people. First, an omnipotent State is posited, and a totalitarian State results. Everything becomes part of the State’s jurisdiction, because everything can potentially contribute to the health or the destruction of the people. Because the law is unlimited, the State is unlimited. It becomes the business of the State, not to control evil, but to control all men. Basic to every totalitarian regime is a positive concept of the function of law.” – The Institutes of Biblical Law
So, one can see that the modern desire for the law to be as a Mother, instead of as a Judge, lies behind most of the specious and illegal legislation that suffuses the ‘Nanny State.’
We just see from different sides of the globe. I in the light, he..... well, you know.
This is the WV forum and anyone is allowed to comment on Anything.
There are good laws and there are bad ones. Too many innocent good people are in jail for unjust laws. We need less prisons and more schools.
Biblical law has.no place in the US. In Iran and Saudi Arabia it does.
Have you never heard of Morris' "The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States?"
Or, Eidsmoe's "Christianity and the Constitution?"
Or, or, or, or, or.
I could go on.
Anyone- absolutely ANYONE who says that Biblical law has nothing to do with the History of the USA, is either brainwashed or ignorant. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the facts outweigh the actions of every Court from FDR on down, that has sought to obliterate that truth. Seventy years of activist judges are merely being traitors to the 150-year + history of the USA that did acknowledge that Truth. And we're not even going back to the Jamestown Colony, Plymouth Rock, or the century before 1776!
No, as the Chaplain to the US Senate, Byron Sunderland noted of Morris' book, 'As the common manual of the people [ this book] should be in teh hands of every individual in all our borders....it may become the morning star of the mightiest day of national regeneration the world has yet beheld."
And, for the record, Iran and Saudi Arabia are MUSLIM Countries. If the USA does not re-adopt Biblical Law, then you WILL have to be made to adopt their Shari'a law...for, as Gary North, PhD has noted, 'In matters religious, you can't fight something with nothing."
As Andrew Fraser notes of, in his masterful book, ‘The WASP Question” -
“Writing in the Harvard Law Review in 1994, Gary Lawson declared flatly that the “post-New Deal administrative state is unconstitutional, and its validation by the legal system amounts to nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution.” p.306
I couldn't have said it any better. (An im from a friend who was reading my responses)
But, you know, I am not here to argue philosophy with you. I want to know about the town. Can any Bluefield natives speak up and tell us about your nice little town- whether in VA or WVA?
That's why I signed up today, and that's what I am looking to find out....
Have you never heard of Morris' "The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States?"
Or, Eidsmoe's "Christianity and the Constitution?"
Or, or, or, or, or.
I could go on.
Anyone- absolutely ANYONE who says that Biblical law has nothing to do with the History of the USA, is either brainwashed or ignorant. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the facts outweigh the actions of every Court from FDR on down, that has sought to obliterate that truth. Seventy years of activist judges are merely being traitors to the 150-year + history of the USA that did acknowledge that Truth. And we're not even going back to the Jamestown Colony, Plymouth Rock, or the century before 1776!
No, as the Chaplain to the US Senate, Byron Sunderland noted of Morris' book, 'As the common manual of the people [ this book] should be in teh hands of every individual in all our borders....it may become the morning star of the mightiest day of national regeneration the world has yet beheld."
And, for the record, Iran and Saudi Arabia are MUSLIM Countries. If the USA does not re-adopt Biblical Law, then you WILL have to be made to adopt their Shari'a law...for, as Gary North, PhD has noted, 'In matters religious, you can't fight something with nothing."
Cheers.
This country was founded on the principle of separating religion from the state. I know Fundy propaganda and revisionism has brainwashed you into believing otherwise.
Anyway I respect your right to practice religion freely on a personal level, but stop advocating on everyone.
As for blue field. There is maybe 10 active members on this forum and most are from the city of morgantown or Huntington, or big towns like wheeling and Charleston. I'm sure there is a poster from bluefield but don't expect a lot of responses from blue field residents.
It was a nice quiet town and should be even better without a prison.
Pknopp. What regulations are you speaking of? I am not a local. Investigating the area. Need more info, thanks.
From the article.
“We’re pretty sure we will be closing it,” Merriman said. “The cost of running the facility is too high. There are so many new requirements that our facility can’t meet without capital improvements.”
It's just like the ridiculous law the government tried to impose where you had to have three entry points in city pools for the handicapped. Local officials said that it wasn't going to happen and if officials wanted to be responsible for closing down the pools over an inane rule to have at it.
The law was put off.
Huntington said that they could not afford to bring facilities up to meet new rain run off rules and simply weren't going to even try. I've heard nothing since they made that decision.
BTW, I wouldn't put too much importance on the news about the jail. Almost all of West Virginia's city and county jails have been closed and prisoners placed under the custody of the State Department of Corrections in the 7 Regional Jails. For some reason, Bluefield has not yet closed their city jail. (according to that link).
Parkersburg is finding out that transporting people back and forth to the regional jail may actually be more expensive than a local jail.
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