Practically and legally, it’s true: Good fences make good neighbors

By David McElroy · July 7, 2011

I was in the back yard with my dog, Lucy, this morning when I started reflecting on the effects of a fence between one of my neighbors and me. More importantly, it made me think about the lack of a fence between another neighbor and me.

Ever since I’ve lived here, there’s been a fence separating me from the guy in the back. I’ve met him. I speak if we both happen to be outside. But that’s about it. There’s no fence between a neighbor on the side and me. They’re nice enough folks. We speak if we both happen to be outside, but there’s nothing else between us, good or bad.

But with the neighbors on the side, there have been minor irritations over the years. Someone who lived with them for awhile parked on the grass next to the street, frequently letting much of his car end up way over on my grass. It didn’t really make any difference. I wasn’t using it anyway. But it was my yard, not his, so it bugged me.

This same neighbor put in a tiny temporary swimming pool for the summer this year in the back yard. It’s no big deal, but it’s just slightly on my side. Not by a lot. But a little. It’s not a big deal, because I don’t really use the spot for anything, but it still bugs me. (After the little pool was filled and in use — when I went back to see what was going on — the neighbor said, “This is a little on your side, but you don’t mind, do you?” What do you say if you know you’re going to continue living next to someone and don’t want to make an enemy?)

You could argue that I just need to get over being irritated at people encroaching on my yard in small ways. I’d argue instead that my reaction is typical of human nature. We have a need to know what’s ours and what we can count on being left alone. We need boundaries, whether it’s property or psychology.

I’ve never had any of these problems with the guy on the other side of the fence. Why? Well, maybe he’s just a super fellow who would never do anything to irritate me. But maybe — just maybe — the fence has something to do with it.

In the early 20th century, Robert Frost wrote a famous poem called “Mending Wall” about two New England neighbors meeting to make minor repairs to the wall that separates their property. (The art above is inspired by the poem.) In the poem, the narrator is questioning the value of making the repairs. He’s questioning whether it’s even necessary to have a wall since both parties know where the property line is. The other neighbor, though, just says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

This line dates to something like the 17th century in England, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, so it’s pretty clear that Frost wasn’t trying to make that obvious a point. He was apparently just asking the question of whether it’s true, with one character taking the traditional side and the narrator questioning whether it’s true or not. The poem ends without any obvious resolution, but I get the impression that the guy arguing for the wall is the one who Frost grudgingly agrees with.

Property is very important to humans. Shared property is a nightmare. The more we know what’s ours — and are willing to respect the rights of others to what’s not ours — the fewer conflicts there are. I know it’s popular in some circles today to talk about cities or entire countries as collective “villages,” but that’s not what I want. I want fences. I want the right to build my kind of community or city without you having the right to tell me how I have to do it or what rules I have to adopt (and vice versa).

Good fences make good neighbors in the physical sense, but good legal fences — allowing different people to live by different sets of rules that they choose for themselves — make good neighbors in a bigger sense. We need to move away from the idea that a majority has the right to make decisions for the rest of us. We need to erect the legal fences that allow groups of us to live under the rules we choose for ourselves. Those kinds of fences would be good for all of us.

Note: If you like the nice art that accompanies this article, you can buy it from the artist’s site, but it’s a little too pricy for most of us.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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