Minnesota NIYFYs

You're probably familiar with the acronym "NIMBY", that stands for "Not in my back yard", a name for those who wish to maintain stasis in properties near their own. They don't want to see any form of development or change nearby that could possibly affect their own property. They do this through zoning ordinances and city regulations that prohibit certain practices that the NIMBYs find offensive, parked cars, un-mown grass, tree houses, and so on.

Falcon Heights, Minnesota, is generally a quiet suburb north of St. Paul except during the run of the Minnesota State Fair across the street, although it drew national attention as the scene of the police shooting of Philando Castile in the front seat of his car on July 6, 2016.

Now a new acronym is needed for a Falcon Heights prohibition of vegetable gardens in front yards. Let's make it NIYFY, "not in your front yard". Some how the Falcon Heights elites that make up the political class have in the past and the present managed to curtail another use of the private property of others, as this account reveals. 

Thank goodness authorities were able to discover and foil this plan before a portion of their domain was defiled by visible soil, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, beans and maybe even watermelons, products that everyone knows should only be seen displayed in supermarkets, not in the space between the street and the front stoop. As they state in the article, front lawns are only to be made up of the well-tended artificial grasses engineered to be as uniform as possible or similarly bogus "native" grasses.

It's probably safe to say that at this point in time the average American adult, not to mention child, has never touched a live, unsegmented chicken, a cow or bull, a pig, or other domestic farm animal that was once a common part of everyone's life. Apparently this lack of familiarity is now, at least in Falcon Heights, to extend to elements of the plant world, examples of which are common in every market. It's not enough to prohibit the cultivation of central nervous system depressants like cannibus and weird mushrooms. It's important to restrict the production of food to its proper place, commercial enterprises located far from the valuable home sites of the suburbanites. 

Freedom is a philosophical mainstay of the American worldview but what does it actually mean if a private property owner can't plant some beets on his own land? The word "Islam" is said to be translatable as "submission". That's exactly the same meaning in practice as "democracy", where one submits to the dictates of strangers. In fact, if Mr. Nguyen would carry out his opposition to the tenets of the city his fate would be death, the ultimate submission.

   Even more strange is the fact that the dominant features of the city of Falcon Heights are the wide-open spaces of this little municipality that are owned by the University of Minnesota. Above is part of the agricultural land that the St.Paul campus uses for crop instruction and experiment. The University golf course and driving range are located in Falcon Heights, as is the college women's soccer pitch. It's not as though the locals aren't exposed to agricultural dirt. Nevertheless, the NIYFYs have a great fear of change unregulated by themselves. If they were really concerned about the matter, while still retaining a smidgen of "freedom", they would gather together the neighbors and buy the property of Mr. Nguyen and make it a memorial to lawn care. Instead they use the offices of government to suborn the property rights of another at no expense to themselves.

Suburban garden update. The Falcon Heights City Council voted 3-2 against Mr. Nguyen's front yard garden.