I was going over my notes from the last Buncombe County Commissioners’ meeting, and I cried. Normally, the things local government does seem so very silly and ill-considered unless the be-all and end-all is growing government. The different thing from Tuesday’s meeting was the commissioners approved remediating veterans to help them become productive, contributing members of society. As Asheville City Councilman Gordon Smith would say for other reasons, “You’re singin’ my tune!” Normally, I only hear government wanting to grow dependencies to expand programs to justify new hires and with them new levels of bureaucracy. This time, people just spoke about getting people dried out and back in the saddle. Sure, we wish government could drop all its urban planning and economic development incentives and work to keep its jurisdiction safe from evil, and that communities would willingly, without government taxation, pick up the responsibility for rehabilitating the most-injured spirits among us. We wish there were enough resources to help everybody. But many at the meeting expressed the need to prioritize vets because so many lost their sanity trying to protect the freedoms elected officials so cavalierly vote away. I thought how horrible it would be to have to go to war, and then I got very sad.