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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Financially struggling woman jailed over unpaid fine for junky yard

By David McElroy · January 13, 2012

If people can tell you what to do with your own property, do you really own it? Or do you just get to use your property as long as you do things with it that the majority like? A financially struggling South Carolina woman found out that her neighbors’ complaints about her yard can send her to jail.

Linda Ruggles is a photographer who lives in a suburb of Charleston, S.C., and her photography business has fallen on hard times recently. She lost her photo studio to foreclosure and she almost lost her home to foreclosure last year. She now works part-time as a cashier at a grocery store, and she sold her blood, collected scrap metal and volunteered for medical experiments to come up with the money to barely keep her home.

The roof of her house leaks, so she was able to buy some roofing tiles, but she hasn’t yet been able to come up with the money to pay roofers to install them, so they’ve been sitting on her roof waiting to be put on for three years. Her yard has some junk, including some columns that need to be installed on her porch.

Her neighbors aren’t happy. After they complained to the local municipal government, she was issued a fine for $480 — which she can’t afford to pay. “I told everyone, ‘If I had $480 to pay the fine, I’d fix the roof,'” she told the Charleston Post and Courier.

The city says it’s an open-and-shut case. She was issued a fine. A judge said she was guilty. She didn’t pay the fine or show up in court. So they threw her into jail for six days.

So who’s right? And who’s to blame? I’d say everyone is right and the system is to blame.

It wasn’t until the early 20th century that the idea of zoning was introduced in the United States. Before that time, you could do whatever you wanted with your property, unless there were deed covenants that restricted how you used the property. A deed covenant is simply a private agreement that comes with a piece of property that says you agree to certain rules about the property before you buy it. If you don’t like the restrictions, you don’t buy the property.

But as a part of the progressive movement, cities decided that they had the power to tell owners what they could do with their property and what rules they had to abide by. (I wrote Thursday about the moral error at the root of the progressives’ ideas.) The rules were determined by the representatives of the majority, of course, so individual property owners had no say in what they were forced to do or not do. These rules have gotten more and more restrictive over the years.

The city where Ruggles lives — like most cities today — has certain rules about property. The city can change the rules whenever it wishes. The only thing that matters is what the representatives of the majority want. If the majority rule that everyone must paint his house purple, that’s what you have to do. If the majority demand that everyone keep lawns kept a certain way and trimmed to certain heights, that’s what you have to do. Your property isn’t really your own.

If I were Ruggles’ neighbors, I wouldn’t be thrilled with what her property looks like, either, but they have no contract with her, so they should have no say in the matter. The idea that the majority should be able to unilaterally dictate to her what she can do with her property is repugnant, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled — in a 1926 decision during the progressive era — that a property owner has no rights against the majority on the matter.

I understand Ruggles’ problem and her struggles. She seems like someone who is up to her neck in problems and has struggled mightily to escape trouble. She’s stayed just barely ahead of financial disaster for the past few years. And now the city punishes her because she’s unable to keep her home as the majority of her neighbors want.

I also understand how the neighbors feel. Because of expectations of zoning, deed covenants aren’t used that much anymore to create the kinds of mutual obligations they once created. These private agreements have been usurped by governments — claiming the right to decide for everyone.

If everyone in a neighborhood wants restrictions about how property has to be kept, I don’t have any problem with that, because it’s voluntary. But I have a serious problem with politicians and bureaucrats operating in the name of the majority to make up rules for everyone else. It’s wrong.

The idea that Ruggles should spend a week in jail because she can’t afford to fix her property and creates more of a mess than the neighbors like is an evil idea. It’s another manifestation of the idea that individuals don’t matter. Only the will of the majority matters.

In a country that was supposed to be founded on principles of individual liberty, it’s a tragedy. It shows how little “the land of the free” really cares about property rights or the rights of individuals when they dare depart from what the majority decide.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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