93 Days Jail For Criminal Gardening

Does Michelle Obama Know About This? | The Agitator.

Their front yard was torn up after replacing a sewer line, so instead of replacing the dirt with grass, one Oak Park woman put in a vegetable garden and now the city is seeing green.

The list goes on: fresh basil, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, cumbers and more all filling five large planter boxes that fill the Bass family’s front yard.

TAL Commentary: Nothing like a vegetable garden to rouse the tyrannical tendencies of petty bureaucrats. The state has a monopoly on the administration of criminal justice. Like any monopolist, it will minimize quality while maximizing cost, and Julie Bass has discovered the cost of “justice.”

I have said elsewhere that the state behaves in such a way that actually increases criminality in society (The Truth About Liberty, especially ch. 7, “Liberty and Justice”), and one way of doing this is by defining new crimes out of common, harmless conduct, like growing vegetables.

In a free society you can enter a contract to forbid growing vegetables in the front yard. This is a voluntary relationship, and if you breach the contract, the other party or parties to the contract can enforce it in a civil action. But in a tyrannical society, the state imposes criminal penalties for growing vegetables, and this is an involuntary relationship. You can buy the property, and then have the government ban vegetables after you buy it. Now you’ve been deprived of the use of your property for no reason other than the state’s desire to control your life.

Just remember; everywhere you turn, the government is there, stealing your freedoms. In this day of out-of-control government, the state is the greatest enemy of liberty we face.