This Lawn is Your Lawn
Saturday August 2, 2008
Here's a cool video from a man who is trying to encourage the next president to plant a kitchen garden on the White House lawn, to set a good example. More power to him! In this short video, set to...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Hey, a conservative quoting Woody Guthrie's radical riposte to "God Bless America", which he considered to be too complacant.
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.
Did you have the "Dig for victory" movement in the USA during WW2?
What happened in WW2 was that rationing produced a large underground economy and the victory gardens were a part of that economy. So someone, like my father, who had an A card, which meant that he had access to as much gasoline as he wanted, would fill up his tank, siphon off half of it, and use that to trade for something else. So if mother needed a new pair of nylons, he would trade a couple of gallons of gas for them with a merchant who kept a few aside from his sales specifically for that purpose.
That is the real reason people planted those things, not to eat the vegetables themselves, but to trade them.
Hey, a conservative quoting Woody Guthrie's radical riposte to "God Bless America", which he considered to be too complacant.
It's funny - I wonder how long its going to take the crunchy cons to realize that this 'new' food and agriculture movement they've 'discovered' is really just old-fashioned socialism. Karl Marx would be proud.
Kitchen gardens = state ownership of the means of production? Right.
While the idea that one can and should grow some of one's food is tantamount to socialism is kooky, the whole point of my book -- which if you haven't read... -- is that there are various ways of living that traditionalist conservatives value which are at time scorned by the mainstream Right (and even the mainstream Left). There are points of convergence between the countercultural left and countercultural right. Agriculture is one of them. Read Schwenkler. Contemplate that all kinds of people, left and right, don't want to be wholly dependent on Big Government or Big Business.
Picking up the baton from Rod:
Who, not only carving out their independence, are facing what may be economic reality with creativity and initiative.
anyone else? [holds out baton...:)]
How's your garden coming along, Rod? Give us an update!
Bob: Gotta go with Rod on this one. I don't get how raising your own vegetables on your land is radical leftist policy. My mom always had a vegetable garden from the time my dad was in WWII and the Korean War, and she needed to provide for herself and my grandma. Are you callin' my MOM a commie! Why I oughta...
No, what would be Marxist actions is to take the rights of people to raise their own food or make a living from raising food for others away from them or to at least make it so expensive or difficult to comply with burdensome regulations that it is not reasonable to raise food for sale or your own use. That way all the food supply would be government controlled and if the people wanted to eat they'd have to do as the government said. What an evil, Marxist plan. OH, wait.
Look here;
http://nonais.org/
and here:
http://www.stopanimalid.org/
And of course the rulers would have to take away peoples land too but that couldn't happen here. This is America, dadgummit! OH, wait.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0509/p01s03-ussc.html
The title of the article is "Eminent Domain And Private Gain"
A little out of date for you? Try googling this site "Castle Coalition", I didn't get the complete address when I had the web site up.
People, I've said it before here and was told I was overreacting and I backed down because you are all better educated than I am but I truly believe, for whatever reason, the U.S. government is trying to gain controll of the food supply. Maybe they truly believe that small farms can't keep up the sanitary practices needed and yet every food scare they try to promote ends up coming from a huge factory farm somewhere. Factory farms which are exempt from following these harsh restrictions. Read these things, see if they make any sense to you.
Bob: This isn't Marxist?
http//animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/index.shtml
Try the flipside of the story here:
http//nonais.org/
And how about this: "Eminent Domain and Private Gain"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0509/p01s03-ussc.html
To old a reference for you? Try here:
http://www.castlecoalition.org/
Carol, I just heard on the radio that it has been over 100 degree this week in Dallas. (Yoicks!) I don't know whether this is good or bad for a garden.
Up here in the NW our garden is struggling along in the 60s, with lots of little green tomatoes and no sign of redness. Only a dab of misty rain a couple of days ago, so they need lots of water. Have had plenty of lettuce, other greens, potatoes, onions, of course, and nothing can stop a zucchini. Sure would love some of your sun and heat though.
who knew | August 3, 2008 10:56 AM, "I don't get how raising your own vegetables on your land is radical leftist policy."
Raising your own vegetables on somebody else's land would be more in the spirit of Woody (see that old verse about stepping over the "keep out" sign). Now that I would endorse even more strongly. Find a disused plot of land owned by some property developer, plant some potatoes and harvest. They'll never know and you'll have put to use some land that was going to waste.
Radical leftist, and I'll wager even some conservatives can see the sense of it.
Even the casual Woody Guthrie scholars know of his association with the communist party, socialist labor organizers and his column for the Daily Worker. Sure, growing vegetables in the backyard doesn't make you a commie, but it was sort of a telling commentary for Rod to evoke a Woody Guthrie song in his post.
The thrust of all this backyard gardening and locavore stuff is a move away from big, fascist, corporate agriculture that wrecks the environment and a move toward small, organic, sustainable, community-oriented agriculture. Some call it ecosocialism. You can call it whatever you want to.
but it was sort of a telling commentary for Rod to evoke a Woody Guthrie song in his post.
Yeah, and you know what it "told"? That the guy who made the video to which I linked used the song in the video.
Why is corporate agriculture "fascist"? Does "fascist" = "something Bob doesn't like"?
Naw.
He's parodying the 'party line' of the 'commie socialist' who made that video you endorsed. And, therefore, since you liked the video's subject, and mentioned Woody Guthrie, YOU are a 'commie socialist' too.
Commie socialist potatoes give babies cancer.
For the record, I'm not criticizing communism or socialism in a purely ideological sense. There have been some infamously poor implementations of both ideologies, but that's another subject. It's the distinction between our current poor implementation of capitalism and socialism that's of interest. And yes, Bob doesn't like fascism. You shouldn't either.
Big Agriculture is fascist because of its sheer gargantuan size, the disproportionate influence it exerts on federal government, and the huge federal subsidies it extracts from taxpayers to exist, subsidies that guarantee that small-scale, organic farms cannot compete effectively. It's fascist because it requires massive amounts of imported fossil fuel to function, and large portions of that fossil fuel require another huge federal subsidy; a military escort out of the Persian Gulf.
And corporate meat production in particular is a complete ecological disaster.
You've read Wendell Berry,this shouldn't be news. Have some champagne and chill out.
I'm just trying to tie in (other than the use of a song) what this has to do with having a garden in your yard.
Karen, me too. I figured growing a garden in your back yard would be the least controversial act possible.
I was born in 1942. So I grew up as a child in the late forties, early fifites. I don't know how he did it, but my father (with the help of my grandfather) always had a big garden. My father worked in a stressful middle-manangement position, but still we always had a big garden each year. Potatoes, tomatos, squash, peas, peppers, beets, carrots, corn, onions, we had it all! Oh, and pumpkins, too!!!
In the spring the ploughman came to turn over the soil. Two horses and a wagon, surely an anachronism today.
So, school summer vacations meant lots of weeding, not my favorite way of spending the summer! And picking blueberries at the country farm in Massachusetts of a family friend. This meant wonderful blueberry pies in the winter. My mother canned tomatoes, but to this day I despise stewed tomatoes!!!!
Today most of the land is wooded and overgrown.
Oh, and Yes, Rod, we had chickens! Fresh eggs!
How very much I wish I could go back to those days!
Sorry about the double rant today. Not that it was a rant amiss, just that they said the same things. My computer told me I had an "unblessed text", anybody know what that is? I, of course, blamed it on CFGU, (Commie Fascist Governments United) :)
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