I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality.
--John Randolph, Virginia
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
--Kris Kristopherson
Recently, Hampton's Esker Road made the front page of the Hampton Union paper with a photo of the owner of five goats who are on their back legs, straining for a pat on the head by their indulgent owner, Jessica Lapa Beals. Ms. Beals is quoted as saying she and her daughter had raised the goats from kids, bottle feeding them and they love their goats.
Neighbors are not so enamored, as the goats have mowed down shrubs and trees and flower beds, having learned to jump fences and given freedom to roam around a shared backyard space, which some call "the meadow," along with sheep, also owned by Ms. Beals. Ms. Beals also keeps pigs and their pig sty's, which putatively violate all sorts of zoning laws and ordinances, not to mention attracting rats.
Ms. Beals has at least one neighbor who shares her love for her barnyard pets, but there are at least four neighbors who testified at a town council meeting about the nuisance these critters pose, describing how one goat became ensnared in some fencing and the neighbor was flummoxed about how to free the piteous goat, who Ms. Beals may love to pieces, but failed to protect from getting hooked like a mackerel in the moonlight.
Curiously, the town council hearing elicited none of the slam dunk comments one might expect. One of the town councilors waxed nostalgic about how he remembered how sheep used to graze on that meadow 30 years ago and his children liked to watch them. Of course, once upon a time Hampton was rural, with pasture land and farms and fishing boats and, if you go back far enough, likely Abenaqui Indians roaming about. But for the last 20 years at least ocean front properties go for well over a million dollars, and anything on the ocean side of Lafayette Road (Route 1) goes for big bucks because of the proximity of the ocean and the convenience to local businesses from restaurants to grocery stores to coffee shops. There are more Mercedes in these neighborhoods than sheep.
The really bizarre thing about the town council meeting was that none of the councilors seemed to have done even the most basic homework about the zoning in ordinances relating to this case, and none seemed inclined to bring up on their computers the basic rules applying, and all of them seemed to be afraid of saying anything dispositive about what seemed a pretty obvious case of a neighbor who was despoiling a neighborhood.
None of the town councilors appeared at all embarrassed about a level of unpreparedness which would have had the average eighth grader blushing to his roots. This case had been on the agenda, and witnesses scheduled and the officials simply acted as if the issues surrounding whether pig sty's are in conformance with town ordinances are so arcane as to be beyond the ken of any mere town official without years of consultations with clerks from the US Supreme Court.
Now we have Ms. Beals decrying all the fuss over her adorable goats, sheep and pigs, which anyone with a heart would surely love having roaming about their yards, pooping indiscriminately and destroying plantings and attracting vermin. Ms. Beals attributed all the fuss to Ms. DeVries alone, who clearly is not alone in her dismay, as there were other neighbors lining up to testify before the town council, in an exercise which put one in mind of the scene in "Alice's Restaurant" where the judge is presented with 18 glossy photos of the massacre at the town dump but the judge is blind and cannot be brought to understanding, despite the overwhelming evidence presented him.
Ms. Beals was quoted as saying she had a petition with fifty signatures supporting her darling brood. But the newspaper reporter failed to say whether this petition has ever been verified, and, given the small number of houses bordering the meadow, 50 does sound suspiciously high.
Ms. DeVries, who led the fight against unrestrained free range barnyard animals is a candidate for the state House of Representatives, and, of course, this being New Hampshire, the home of the libertarian First Staters, she is being cast as a tool of the heavy hand of government, intruding upon the liberty of animal loving folk everywhere, who simply want to raise their animals, who want to be free to poop on their neighbors' lawns, or have their pets do it, and who want their animals to be allowed to eat their neighbors' gardens without government interference.
One man's freedom can be another man's undoing, of course. The slaver's freedom to own slaves is only the most vivid example.
But consider this one: The farmer who owns a herd of 300 cattle infected with Mad Cow disease who finds a government official from the Department of Agriculture on his doorstep telling him he has to kill all those infected animals. The farmer wants to sell them for hamburger meat, and that means that 20 years later the 20,000 people who ate those hamburgers are found drooling in their beds, dying of Jacob-Creutzfield Disease, which is what human beings who eat Mad Cow hamburgers get. Of course, by that time farmer Brown has retired and the price of his freedom to engage in private enterprise and a free market and to do with his animals what he wants to do has cost 20,000 people their lives, 20,000 families their kin.
The Free Staters say there is no need for government intervention--the free market would have stopped farmer Brown from selling that meat, or the law courts would kick in to make the families whole, eventually.
Fat chance.
Sometimes, you just need government.
And Ms. DeVries, being a Democrat, now faces the onslaught of libertarian wrath, having called for the normal working of government to protect neighbors against the anti social behavior of a single family.
Sometimes, people simply have to learn that to live in a community, you need rules, laws and government.
This is because there will always be the Jessica Beals who think their own rights to have her animals poop on your lawn should supersede your right to enjoy your own property as you wish.
Some people just need to be housebroken by the government and Ms. DeVries is willing to bring down the heavy hand of government upon the backsides of those who need it.
For my part, I'm all for a little government when government is needed. I don't like people who park diagonally across three parking spaces, who defecate on my lawn, who throw litter heedlessly out of their car windows as they cruise along the roadways, who play loud music on their porches and toss beer bottles onto my driveway.
Those folks just weren't raised right.
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