An Southaven, Miss., homeowner is refusing to give up his land to make way for a park and has called militia members from several states to protect his home. Bill and Carolyn Cockrell have appealed the court-ordered $66,000 sale, and city officials say they won't be evicted until appeals are completed. Militia members began arriving last week. "We are nonviolent people", Bill Cockrell said. "We want to resolve all this diplomatically."

Comments: It strikes me that situations such as this, testing government power and competence, are very dangerous. If a number of people should get killed in such a confrontation resulting in a further stalemate and the perception that government is powerless to end it, perhaps followed by other sympathetic incidents, there could be a crash in the dollar on foreign markets as foreigners rush to get their money to safer ground followed by economic and political turmoil feeding further into revolutionary psychology.

If it is brought out that these people lost their house through crooked government dealing, government's problems are obviously much further complicated. And in such case, if government only then straightens it out, the message is that it takes armed confrontation with government to get honesty.

Of course economic times are relatively good now, and the chance of such a scenario happening are weaker than they will be on the next downturn in the business cycle.