Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

My home city began life as an adobe village. I frequently go online to peruse the photos. Phoenix, Territory of Arizona, was about as Old West as it got.

When I was growing up, in the Sixties and Seventies, Phoenix was still more of a large town than a city. It sprawled out into the desert, but didn’t overpower it. We boarded our horses at a small stable on the other side of the citrus orchard behind our house. We could saddle them up and ride into the wilderness at a moment’s notice.

A few days ago, I got a flyer from the city. The bustling minds that brought us recycling barrels are at it again. We’re putting the wrong sort of stuff in those blue receptacles. Now flunkies from the city are going to comb through everyone’s recycling trash to make sure we’ve got the right stuff, or nag us into compliance.

In my sorting between garbage and recycling, I’ve been using basic common sense as to what goes where. I must admit, however, that occasionally that blue barrel serves as an overflow container. When I fill up the green one with plain old garbage, into the other the rest has gone. I’m sure to get one of the nasty-grams the flunkies will be leaving behind.

Now the neighborhood in which I went to high school has been officially designated an “urban village.” This gives the city a license to meddle in its affairs. Until Phoenix gobbled it up, Sunnyslope was a proud little town in its own right. The process of digestion has had predictable results.

Every town surrounding Phoenix, and the desert for many, many miles, has been conquered by progress. But progress is in the eye of the beholder. The marauding army of government has set itself up as the sole beholder whose estimation counts.

Government is always tied to more government. The purpose of setting up hoops for trash-recyclers to leap through is not only to simplify the task of sorting our garbage. It is also to program us for more environmentalist meddling in the future. The scourge will not continue to come at us strictly from the municipal level. The state, and then the feds, will soon join in to a greater degree than ever before.

I confess I wish that most of the crowd that has moved here would pick up and go somewhere else. Boarding horses within the city limits is now impossible. Getting from one place to another in an automobile is a daily battle. Certain neighborhoods are so crime-infested that they can no longer be safely entered at all. Government has made these problems not one whit better, but horrifically worse.

Time in the wilderness clears the mind. Riding a horse out into the desert, enjoying a saddlebag lunch and shooting at dead shrubbery exercises muscles most city dwellers don’t even know they have. Fighting rush-hour traffic to get to a pointless job in a cubicle is their idea of time well spent. And they won’t be happy until all the stragglers have been assimilated into conformity.

I have achieved the satisfaction of working from home. I don’t want to work in a cubicle. When I had a job in a downtown high-rise, I was miserable. Is that because I grew up on horseback in the open countryside? Though I can’t say for certain, I would bet a connection exists.

Since I don’t see human beings as a collective herd--all of whom could be trained to behave the same way--I hold out hope for us. Not everyone will respond to being boxed-in by becoming docile. I got used to freedom early in life, but others may crave it late in their captivity. Liberty enables us to be fully human, and each of us has a desire for it, no matter how heavy-handedly that longing may be discouraged.

We can start small, if need be. We can take the city’s nasty notice about our recycling habits and recycle that. If we can’t ride our horses into the wilderness, we can drive there and then take a long walk. The wilderness is never too far away. Not when we keep it in our hearts.