HOAs Target “Don’t Tread on Me” Flags
Posted in Sustainability on 09/01/2010 08:08 pm by stephanie
The ACLU is helping a guy in Arizona fight for the right to fly a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on his home. At issue is the Homeowners Association (HOA), which is making a stink about the flag. The “Gadsden flag” as it is also known, has been popular in the Ron Paul movement as an icon for constitutionalists. Now it’s also used by many Tea Party members, though the man in question claims he’s not involved with the Tea Party.
Of course, this is not the first instance of an HOA going overboard, but unfortunately, this may be a trend. Yahoo News reports that HOAs are trying to ban these flags around the country. While flags may be a sticky issue (what should you do if someone wants to fly a Nazi flag in the neighborhood?), HOAs seem to have gotten too much power in recent years.
HOAs are also making it hard for people to do practical, sustainable things such as hang laundry out to dry in the backyard, start a garden, or keep chicken on their property for food. As we hit peak oil, the ability to have your own garden may not just be a luxury but a necessity.
I’s not just the HOAs that are the problem. Governments in several Western states, including Utah, Colorado, and Washington, have banned the collection of rainwater in rain barrels, claiming that the water is being “diverted” from other places that might need it.
Rain barrel water and the right to hang a flag on your home may not seem like big deals, but as Mike Adams writes:
Today, we’ve basically been reprogrammed to think that we need permission from the government to exercise our inalienable rights, when in fact the government is supposed to derive its power from us. The American Republic was designed so that government would serve the People to protect and uphold freedom and liberty. But increasingly, our own government is restricting people from their rights to engage in commonsense, fundamental actions such as collecting rainwater or buying raw milk from the farmer next door.
Today, we are living under a government that has slowly siphoned off our freedoms, only to occasionally grant us back a few limited ones under the pretense that they’re doing us a benevolent favor.
HOAs and governments are more than happy to nitpick and slowly chip away at freedoms. But in order to navigate the changes ahead, we’ll need as much room as possible to try to create a new and better world. Let’s try to create a future that is more open and free, not less.