(Jack Perry [send him mail] is an arrowmaker and
writer who lives in the Four Corners area of the Southwestern United States. He
has been a truck driver, a purchasing agent at a now-defunct renewable energy
company (don't even ask him about the "Green energy" scam), and
served in the 101st Airborne Division. He spends his time practicing
traditional archery, making arrows in the wilds of the Arizona high desert, and
finding himself only mildly amused by the antics of the Great Father in
Washington.)
Once in a
while, you see a small thing that perfectly illustrates the bigger problems as
a whole. When my wife and I first moved here to
Tucson (Yeah, I know, my bio isn’t updated, I’m working on it), we started
getting people coming to the door offering landscaping services. I’m somewhat
puzzled because I’m thinking, we’re in a desert here. What’re they going to do,
move rocks around in the sand we call a front yard? Cactus is pretty much
self-sufficient, the ultimate “minimalist” of plants that doesn’t need or want
any mollycoddling or fussing about. A cactus needs humanity like a bird needs a
rowboat. Cactus have a lot to teach us. So, why are these guys coming to the
door and asking about landscaping my yard, such as it is? I’m rather happy to
look upon the absence of grass and shrubs carved into the shapes of balloons.
The answer came because
the City of Tucson, some time back, in an epic decision surely up there with
the writing of the Constitution, passed a law forbidding an abundance or a lot
of growth of weeds or other government-unapproved plants. Basically, it’s
against the law here to have plants growing in your front yard taller than six
inches. Now, they make exceptions, graciously enough, for cultivated plants.
Wow, you can literally smell the freedom already! But it better be roses and
not dandelions. And I got a visit from a city inspector about the “weeds” in my
yard. Some government informant in the neighborhood helpfully called the city
and fingered me, so the inspector said. Wow, that’s right neighborly of them!
Really, do people have nothing better to do than run around with a yardstick
and measure people’s plants in the middle of the night so they can run and
snitch them off to the government? “I knew it! This plant is exactly six and three-quarters
on an inch tall! This is a serious offender! If we don’t stop them now, who
knows what will happen next!? They might even be the headquarters for
WeedQaeda!”……….
(Full text at link below)
Another thing. Here’s a mostly liberal city,
controlled by the same Democrats screaming bloody murder about climate change,
overuse of fossil fuels, greenhouse gasses, and so forth. But here they are
ordering the use of gasoline because all those weed whackers are powered by
gasoline engines! This is why all those folks are asking if they can do your
lawn care for you. Because the city comes and issues citations to people who
have weeds in the yard and if they don’t cut them in ten days, they have to pay
a fine! Remarkable! This is the Obamacare of lawn maintenance. “If you like
your lawn, you can keep it!” Yeah, sure we can! But if we don’t “keep it” your
way, we get dinged with a fine.
Seriously, why is it the business of government to go around and tell
people to cut the weeds in their yard? “Well! Other people don’t like looking
at them!” So? I don’t like looking at ceramic donkeys and fountains featuring
cherubs tinkling into the water in peoples’ yards, but I’m not going to
whine to the government about it. It isn’t the government’s business if people want
to grow trees, wheat, barley, dandelions, marijuana, Venus flytraps, weeds, or
friggin’ opium poppies in their front yards. That’s private property and it’s
high time not just the government, but nosy busybody neighbors learned to
respect that. Because you know what happens when we don’t mind our own business
and beg the government to get involved in telling other people how to run their
front yards?......
See, the
government is the government from federal to local. They’re all cut from the
same cloth. Or, rather, cut from the same neatly
clipped lawns where not a free dandelion may arise before it is whacked down in
disgust at anything that dares rear its own head without government mandate.
Everything that we call “salad” today began as weeds in barley fields in the
Fertile Crescent several thousands of years ago. Had American government
existed then, we wouldn’t have salads because the government would have ordered
those “weeds” cut down and thrown away before anyone could say, “Hey, these
taste great with olive oil and vinegar!” They probably wouldn’t have gotten as
far as growing barely or wheat because those are grasses that rather look like
foxtails. “Cut those weeds from in front of your skin tent! It doesn’t look
nice! So sayeth Grug, the clan leader!” And here we’d be today, squatting in
caves, without having tasted bread once in several thousands of years. But our
yards would look nice.
So when we
wonder why the government meddles in Syria and elsewhere, remember, this all
begins at a local level. Government doesn’t rule with the consent of the
governed. Government rules with the whining of the governed………
Again, the
government needs to get out of our lives. This business of using the government
against one another is pathetic, to say the least. I kid you not, we’ve got
people that drive around the neighborhood looking for offenders they can snitch
to the government about. These folks across the street just got hit with a
citation and the dude was out there hoeing down the weeds in his yard. People
who have nothing to do with their lives but encourage the government to harass
people. Makes me wonder who went up and lobbied for the lawn care law to begin
with. Imagine all the crocodile tears shed at that soiree: “I’m just so
traumatized! My neighbor has these flowers in his yard and he doesn’t even know
what they are! They could be al-Qaeda for all we know! They just popped up one
day! I mean, we’re terrified! Government needs to act! Because otherwise, we’ll
wake up one day and people will think they can just grow whatever they want in
their own yards!”
I don’t know, my front
yard is pretty tasty. Good hot soup, extra garlic, hold the government,
please. But another plant springs to mind if you’ll pardon the pun. The famous
poppies of Flanders Fields. You know, those red poppies they hand out on
Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day to remind us of the millions upon millions
that have died thanks to governments that cannot mind their own business. How
about those flowers, huh? I bet if they sprung up in peoples’ yards here,
unannounced, someone would call the city about it. But they use this flower to
ask us to remember their sacrifice. Excuse me, those weren’t sacrifices, those
were slaughters. World War One alone saw men cut down with machine guns like
Tucson weeds before a weedwhacker. Maybe one
day we’ll learn how to be smarter than this. Maybe one day we’ll learn how to
mind our own business and insist the government do the same. But meanwhile, we
waste taxpayer money to make people cut down some beautiful green plant that
came up in a desert to remind us that life will always find a way and the works
of God answer to no man.
