Individual versus community rights

Scott C. Ecklin
Published: April 13, 2008

I attended the Town Hall Meeting on April 5 at the Ferlazzo Building. The meeting was about “Community Clean Up.” I was very disappointed to hear one of my fellow citizens give a short speech about the “community,” and never once speak about the “individual.” Let me remind all of my fellow citizens that the “Bill of Rights” protects the “rights” of the “individual” from the “fascism” of the “community” and government.

Free people understand (may not like, but understand) that you will have to accept that your neighbors may not be as clean and tidy as you would like them to be. I made the statement that “only your kind of people are allowed to own property in Woodbridge” and not one of my fellow citizens in that auditorium DISAGREED. And worse, the police officers attending stood silent when a county official advocated illegal trespassing to aid in the cleaning up of our neighborhood. Completely unacceptable in the U.S.A.

Blight is the reason given to use our police and courts as a means to “compel” cleanliness upon our citizens. How far will they go? Will they take your home and maybe kill you if you refuse to leave? Old neighborhoods need blight to make it cost effective to tear down that neighborhood and build new, modern, efficient and environmentally sound homes and/or businesses. With the county codes being enforced, these same homes will still be here 100 years from now. I know that future generations will not want to be stuck with outdated homes.

I will end by stating that my home is my “sanctuary” not an “investment” to be regulated by the government. And I can’t afford to be neighborly not knowing if one of my fellow citizens may rat me out to the government if I invite them onto my property. If you have a problem with your fellow citizen parking on their own grass or storing boats, trailers or old unused vehicles on their own private property than you really do not belong in a “free country” where “individuals” have the “right” to own “private property.”

SCOTT C. ECKLIN
Woodbridge