“The abortion industry claims that abortions do not cause psychological harm to either women or men.”
Chuck Colson
Colson was describing the horrible fifth month botched abortion of Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler’s girlfriend. I’m not sure Tyler would appreciate being portrayed as a victim of the “abortion industry”. Real people make these difficult decisions, and it’s best to allow them to do so without the “help” of a nanny-state. It’s also best that they make informed decisions and that they understand the consequences. This is where family, friends, spouses, significant others, counselors and doctors can provide vital information if their liberty to do so is not abridged.
Thinking about how deeply personal these choices are, it’s hard to imagine that the decision making process is controlled by an “industry” and that women don’t “own” their own bodies. If women don’t own their own bodies, what do they own?
“If you have an IRA or a 401K, chances are, you own an energy company”
Television commercial sponsored by energytommorow.org.
Energy tomorrow explains that energy is integral to our lives and our economy. This advocacy arm of the American Petroleum Institute admits that there is an energy industry, but they claim that the industry is owned by all of us. Isn’t that what socialism is, public ownership of the means of production?
I wonder what Ayn Rand would think if she saw women being degraded as passive victims of an “industry” while energy production/consumption is portrayed as the publicly owned consequence of progress and human nature. I think she’d look at our transportation system – the mixing bowl and other “natural features” of that public ownership – and ask how a modern-day American politburo decided to build these monstrosities. She’d visit repeated copies of new subdivisions of three story townhouses and vinyl sided colonials, from New York to Los Angeles and notice that they all look the same.
She’d shake her head and ask where Howard Roark is today and how “capitalism” produced the same outcome that she attributed to socialism in her writings. She’d have words for the propaganda mills at the API and Colson Center and their “second hander” stranglehold over individual liberty and innovation. She’d wonder why her world has turned into its opposite.
EB,
But Ayn Rand turns the CPR crowd into a bunch of second-handers. That’s got to be worth something.
There is nothing about having an HOA that means you have to have any architectural controls about your mailboxes or anything else. There is nothing about an HOA that means anyone has to tell you much of anything. An HOA is a mechanism by which it is POSSIBLE TO MAKE RULES, but nothing about those rules is mandated by the government, other than that they are subject to the law.
Nothing about having an HOA means that you have to build a giant development instead of a small community. Nothing about having and HOA means that every block has to look the same. Nothing about having an HOA means that you have to pack maximum density into every square inch of a development. Nothing about having an HOA means that a developer couldn’t use a human scale. Nothing about having an HOA means that a development can’t respect its natural environment.
Except that in any case so many of today’s developments are huge, impersonal, bland, cookie-cutter, use cheap and short-lived materials, have no relation to their environment, and on top of that (in Virginia) end up costing existing taxpayers tons of bucks in capital costs for infrastructure.
I don’t like Ayn Rand. She’s a clumsy writer and her philosophy is very shallow. She lived her own life by a very different set of rules than those she claimed to believe. Like many of today’s right wing politicians she was a hypocrite.
David I am paying attention. I always do, because the linguistic gymnastics here require it! lol
Yes, the archives view IS broken. So, the search engine is less than helpful when it leads to a 404 error.
So, here in lingui/gym land, I’ll be happy to concede that perhaps no content is “missing”, it’s just irretrieveable, unviewable, not able to be accessed, AWOL, not available, and so on.
“Jonathan previously made claims implying that Sterling was draining into Taylorstown..” False.
“..where I supposedly said Sterling is in the Catoctin Creek watershed.” Also false. You’re not even paying attention to what we say. Try reading my previous comment again, more carefully, and please stop making false claims about what other people said.
There is no content missing from this site, although the archives view is broken. The search engine works fine for finding older posts.
Exactly what part of this do YOU not understand, David?
Jonathan previously made claims implying that Sterling was draining into Taylorstown, which I argued with him, which I can no longer source because half of your archives are now missing.
Please provide the missing archives with his hyperbolic conflations, as well as a link to “elsewhere” where I supposedly said Sterling is in the Catoctin Creek watershed.
Word games do not make it true that I said something.
End of story? lol
Exactly what part of this don’t you understand? You, on this very thread, claimed that Jonathan and/or I said that Sterling is in the Catoctin Creek watershed. I’ve also seen you make that claim elsewhere. The claim is false, not to mention silly. End of story.
p.s.–still waiting for the link to the place where I said down was up. (i.e. the words that were placed in my mouth with no reference provided).
1. Jonathan, why DO you LIKE Ayn Rand? Simply having the word in the title means nothing, particularly when there is no content to flesh it out that actually includes any LIKING for either the individual or their work.
2. You do seem to be very self-focused in your world view Jonathan. Forgiveable, as everyone usually is. It doesn’t mean you like anyone or anything that is different from yourself, or have evidenced it here.
Yes, I have actually read three Ayn Rand books, although I admit to never getting all the way through the “A is A” manifesto in Atlas Shrugged, and skipping ahead to get back to the story. After it had been stated so many times throughout the book by different characters, by the 15th page of the repetitive minutia I thought I’d move on rather than read it two hundred more times in a row again.
Do you feel you practice objectivism?
Well, you do seem to have a vision. But so did the villains in Rand’s novels.
You do seem to be immoveable in your vision. But so were the villains.
The heroes’ visions involved creation of something positive, and wanting the negatives of the world to “get out of the way” of those working toward (what the protagonists believed to be) the positives.
And that’s what you seem to be missing.
Where is your positive creation that is yours and yours alone, that you seek to bring forth?
As I have said mutliple times, I see little more than conflated laundry lists of things you consider to be negative. Pasting “like” onto one of the lists is a true Randian-villain technique, where down is made to be up by fiat of the controllers, in forcing their vision onto others.
So now I’m Karl Rove? Another negative conflation from the guy who has yet to articulate why he “likes” Ayn Rand.
Eric,
Barbara didn’t misunderstand the intent of this post, nor is she being forthright in her comments. She’s putting words in my mouth and she’s using the Rovian tactic of attacking the strength of my post and my public comments before the BoS and LTEs. Cases in point:
1. She says I don’t like anything. What’s the title of the post? Why I like Ayn Rand.
2. She attacks me for being selfish and for not looking out for “average people” and claims to have read several books by Rand. Do you think she knows what objectivism is?
Eric, are you forgetting Jonathan’s usual formula of connecting Delgaudio to anything he disagrees with (much as Chuck Colson is somehow connected to a supposed liking for Ayn Rand above)?
I don’t find Jonathan’s reverse spaghetti method a chortle or teehee much.
As I said, I think it’s a bit sad that he seems to dislike everything, and connect all the boogeymen in one unending grand rant.
(but only if you “get” it. And I’m afraid I do.)
FWIW, There are significant population centers in the basin and near the headwaters of Catoctin Creek. Sterling certainly does not fall in that category as I think it is not even in the CC basin let alone upstream. Perhap in your haste to find a gotcha, teehee, chortle, giggle, lol, roflmao, etc quote you misunderstood the poster’s intent
Um, sorry David, but I never said that DOWNstream was actually UP.
And as I said, if you have access to the archives, then please prove I said what you are now stating I did, rather than simply seeming to recall.
(then we can get back to what any of Jonathan’s conflations have to do with literary appreciation, and the still-unanswered whether he likes anything much at all? lol)
No, neither Jonathan nor I made that statement. The only person to have done so – with the erroneous attribution – is Barbara.
DCBB, I’m not sure what argument Jonathan was making when claiming that what the eastern communities did drained into his stream (peed in his pool, among other charming analogies). The county generally drains to the northeast, toward the Potomac, so catoctin Creek debouching into that river upstream of Goose Creek, Broad Run, Sugarland Run, etc pretty much precludes that theory, especially since the Potomac is not tidal past Georgetown.
David, you’ll have to do better than “seeming to recall” that it was I and not Jonathan who repeatedly made that downstrem argument; I argued the point extensively with him when he was ranting about Sterling and the CBPO, that he was in fact UPSTREAM of them, so they were not directly “pooping” in his drinking glass.
Alas, with the change of this site from a .us to a .org, many of your archived topics seem to have vanished, so I can’t cite them for you, but as an admin, perhaps you have access to archived files not readily available to the general public.
Please PROVE where I so stupidly made the dumb remarks?
Jonathan, as usual, your obsession with excrement in debate is a tried-and-true technique for you. How much easier to focus on a volatile subject like people excreting into your water supply than to discuss specifics of the proposed legislation!
As noted, unfortunately some of your more “out there” statements are no longer visible; down the memory hole with some of YOUR words in the process. Convenient! lol
I am not trying to defend Barbara or David. But I think there is a relatively agnostic way to check the facts of which locale has the higher elevation Taylorsville or Stering via USGS.
From what I found; Sterling has an elev of 292 feet, Taylorsville has an elev of 92 feet. But depending on the feeder creeks, tributaries (runs) and/or rivers etc – it could be possible that T’ville might be downstream from Sterling. But again I am not a land/water expert.
I admit until I researched the elevation of each city, I thought T’ville would have the higher elevation, not Sterling, so I learned something new. Who knew, right?
That is a hilariously dumb thing to say, and Barbara has said it more than once as I recall.
Ok, enough.
Oh Barbara, I forgot to point out your other words.
Your words, not my words, not David’s words, yours, all yours.
Barbara,
You said:
If deer and other wild creatures get a pass, then why shouldn’t people get a pass too? If people get a pass, they are excreting into “our” streams aren’t they? Btw, you forgot to mention the fish. They excrete in the streams too.
If you weren’t arguing that humans deserve the same rights as deer and wild creatures, then you were making an absurd argument, and we all know that you weren’t doing that, so what exactly were you saying? What do “your” words mean?
David, the overpersonalized fallacies in your (and Jonathan’s) weighted advocacy remarks are best illustrated here by YOUR own words: “This paragraph also made me laugh because it can only logically be read as advocacy for open-pipe discharge into the streams.”
Really? And I said that where? When? With which words saying I supported it and was specifically advocating for it?
Here’s where the word games go beyond silly. And is a great example of the pious negativity of some who endlessly preach.
It kind of began downhill, David, so it really had nowhere to go.
But I can understand the determined perception that one is elevated simply because one prefers to believe so, just as the remarks when CBPO was under debate that had Taylorstown somehow DOWNSTREAM from Sterling just, well, because!–rotfl
Wow, this starts badly and then goes downhill:
Of course we don’t “own” a stream, we live adjacent to one that we can observe on a daily basis. That’s really the truth that Barbara wants to turn on its head – streams, and groundwater, are shared resources, quite the opposite of being “mine.” This paragraph also made me laugh because it can only logically be read as advocacy for open-pipe discharge into the streams. If the deer and other wild creatures get a pass, after all, why not humans? I bet that many people would be surprised to learn that it was traditional practice at one time to pipe toilets directly into streams like Catoctin Creek – a friend and neighbor recently bought a property that had exactly that configuration, still in use. Unless and until a property like that changes hands, the people who live there literally “excrete” into the stream. I’m sure that Barbara was just joking about that, though.
I guess I’ll just point out the obvious here: In Pariahdog’s comment above, he quotes Barbara’s own words as examples of what often really do read as personal attacks on our character. In Barbara’s comment, on the other hand, notice that all of the language she uses to claim that Pariahdog is such a horrible person is also …Barbara’s own words. Instead of producing any actual evidence of Pariahdog’s supposed hatefulness, sneering, etc, she substitutes her own descriptions and characterizations of what (she says) he must have meant. The result is really the opposite of what she intended, I think.
As “average people,” presumably we all have a common interest in protecting both the freedom to maximize our individual potential and the resources we hold in common. Both aspects are necessary, and any attempt to make one of them ‘the solution’ and the other ‘the problem’ are bound to fail.
Jonathan, you are obsessed with people excreting in “your” stream, aren’t you? The deer and other wild creatures get a pass, but actual logic is seldom one of your parameters when on your perennial soapbox.
Central planning occurs at all concentric levels of government. How funny that you agree in correcting paradox that it was an ORDINANCE–a tool of those centrally planned features like zoning that help to limit the “visionaries” like Roark, with whom you apparently choose to identify, in spite of your outspoken support for more ordinances, and controls over the years.
Again, your lack of knowledge (or most likely refusal to acknowledge anything that doesn’t fit your chosen talking point) is that those architects, designers etc have to take their chances WITHIN the bounds of the central system, UNLESS they are fortunate enough to do as you have done, buy a piece of property (from a greedy developer, i.e. anyone who sells land to anyone other than…you? Whom I’m sure you did not address as such when buying what allowed you to build exactly what you wanted–still within the confines of ordinances?)
The examples of “hate” you quote are responses to yes, your own sneering and ugly speech. A nice technique to be sure Jonathan, but quite transparent: say something ugly, then when people engage with you on it, you quote their response to your speech ONLY, and say they are dealing in hate.
Our downzoning WAS a local issue Jonathan. But it was also, again, part of the concentric circles of central planning known by various names, many of which you have espoused on the public record, and often with the same derisive speech you seem to use for everything (but are sometimes just joking and most people are simply too simple to get it–lol).
Something you are certainly not too simple to get, but probably too wedded to your ideological nonsequitors to ever admit, is that limiting supply of lots while increasing the cost and processes for using it is going to make it very difficult for any INDIVIDUAL to be just that, from sea to shining sea as long as there are people like you to keep that bandwagon of control (in your image) rolling strong.
As long as you are a mouthpiece for it, IOW.
And it comes off smug, hateful, snide, and waspishly ugly Jonathan, because you DO have your cake, you want to control whether others have any at all and what kind they are allowed to have, and then you mock them for not having a kind you approve, and claim it is because of deficiencies in them.
Because if they were REAL people, as opposed to plastic ones, they’d be…just like YOU.
Right?
And that’s not hateful, ugly or mean spritied at all.
In the world in which you are the center.
Paradox. The CBPO was an ordinance, not a change to zoning. The great central planner that we refer to as Allah, God, Gia or Yaweh put those creeks and streams on this earth We didn’t zone them. They are natural features.
Kathy McNichol wrote a very funny LTE to the Leesburg Today that essentially said:
“Vote for Debbie Rose because she knows how to eliminate waste”
We all know how to do that, and some of us, and our animals do it in the creek. Others have centrally planned storm water management features in their back yards because corrupt politicians collaborated – in a central planning exercise – with developers who wanted to reuse designs and sell their products, e.g. Shockey Concrete.
There are as many ways to have developed our communities differently as there are architects, designers and financiers willing to take a chance, but as Howard Roark says in his closing speech:
Think about that as you review some of Barbara’s words about David and I and our experience as the first designer/builders of the first straw bale home in the County.
Ok, the hatred is pretty self evident. Now read this carefully.
If the downzoning was a local issue, it doesn’t explain why the same centrally concocted design patterns were built over the same period from sea to shining sea does it? Barbara says we need that central planning for “average people”. Do you think she realizes she comes off as a mouthpiece for “second-handerism”.
Paradox, if they had honestly thrown zoning against it, then there would have been property owner notification, as required by law.
Not a pot/kettle issue, but one of fundamental honesty.
As for identifying and quanifying the supposed problem the draconian planning was supposed to fix (was it for the Bay, or local streams? Changed by the week, didn’t it?), one grant funded partial study in the wrong season by various volunteers, with no defined rubric against which to compare it in the region?
Yeah, identified and quantified.
Not a dead horse at all–the race has just finally changed to where it should have gone once the EPA approved the state WIP.
Identify and quantify a problem? Loudoun did, quite thoroughly:
http://www.loudoun.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=3390
And they didn’t throw “complete central planning” at it. They threw zoning at it. As has been mentioned elsewhere, the ordinances in question did not permit or prohibit any specific kind of building. They simply required mitigation of any impact of that building on stream buffers. That salient, simple, and underappreciated fact got lost in the debate. But that issue is now moot, as you well know. Little use in beating that dead horse.
As for the “ornate trappings on HOW one says something.”
Pot. Kettle.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Paradox, it would seem truly “best” practices would identify and quantify a problem before throwing complete central planning at it.
As for word games, they are often played here.
I’ve commented before that the ornate trappings on HOW one says something often trump any inclusion of content.
In this case, I think Jonathan is playing reverse spaghetti method–pulling lots of strands together and saying they make a coherent dish.
Once again, a thread has digressed into a semantic argument about terminology. This is definitely useful for actually addressing the best way to make a better future in Loudoun County!
(I also think we’re talking about best practices here, but sometimes the best practice IS central planning. For example, I rather like my national military centrally planned…)
Jonthan, again, just because you’re you doesn’t mean you get to call people liars because you FEEL like it.
As I confirmed to Eric, it is central planning you AGREE with, so of course you may wish to call it another name and pretend that “best practices” are all it was about.
(p.s. re false analogies, you may wish to reexamine Chuck Colson + abortion rights + peak oil + plastic houses = I’m going to say I like Ayn Rand because it gives me a way to mix all my talking points together AND try to make fun of teabaggers all at the same time just because I said so even though I didn’t say it! Whee!)
Best practice == Central planning???
Isn’t that a false analogy at best and coming from a former planning commissioner, perhaps we should call it a flagrant lie.
As I said Eric. Central planning that you AGREE with.
“Read the CBPO–it was a lot of central planning…”
Only in your skewed world, Barb…
David, by all means give a pass to Jonathan’s derision of others, as all he got was “behave” when he posted the overtly sexual “humor” about Donny F and his old boss on a thread which Liz had to police to the max.
I think people SHOULD have more choice.
As I said, read the Comp Plan and other county documents. Read the CBPO–it was a lot of central planning, but you agreed with that, right?
As when we spoke in the courtyard of the county building at the coordinated union protest, you didn’t know what was on the agenda or whether you were for it or against it–you were there “as a person of faith on behalf of working families”.
Good. Also safe, general, and talking point without specific knowledge.
What you guys are arguing FOR in building choice IS beyond the reach of many.
And it is because of the central planning you both often support at the county level.
It looks like the only one here deriding other people is Barbara Munsey. How one manages to characterize the belief that ordinary people should be able to make choices about the homes they live in as making fun of “plastic people,” I don’t know.
I don’t see why the freedom to choose a house size and design that fits a person’s tastes and lifestyle should be “out of reach” for all but the wealthy.
Eric, look up the Property Owners Associations Act, and then the Code of VA. HOAs are pretty standard boilerplate, governed primarily by state law.
Sometimes they are amended from within (voting by corporate board members), and sometimes from without (state code amendments such as those outlawing HOAs abilities to ban–but still regulate–things like satellite dishes and solar panels).
For you to opine that they are strictly developer creations is absurd, but purely in keeping with the meme. Yes, the developers put them together for their developments, but under the guidelines of government regulation.
As for things like lot coverage, placement of mailboxes, setbacks, landscaping, STREETSCAPE, materials etc, go read the Comp Plan and the FSM.
You gents who like to wave it around need to realize that a great deal of what you’re complaining about here is defined right there in our own central planning–which Ms. Rand decried so thoroughly.
That’s the trouble with wanting to regulate the world in your own image! Once its designed by committee, even the prophets of utopia don’t seem to recognize it anymore (if they ever read the results of their desires in the first place).
mosborn, no one says you have to find it offensive. You may love your house for its affordability, and hate it for its plastic.
Your house is not you, I know. But tell me, if someone were to come up to you and launch into a diatribe ridiculing, criticizing and condemning your house, relating it to everything that person finds wrong with the world and life in general, would you find that a gesture of good fellowship?
Just curious.
“They aren’t DEVELOPER RUN anymore, are they?”
No they are not, Barb, but the keey word is ANYMORE and the point is they are developer run DURING the buildout. Further, the developer will not let you bring a builder or even your own building design to the development because that lowers their profit margin (whether it is part of a HOA covenant or not). You have demonstrated here that the builder develops the covenants and the HOA before residents even show up. Surely, you are not trying to tell us that governmental staff write the covenants? Sure they may require that a HOA covenants be developed. Clearly there are common area upkeep concerns, stormwater management maintance , etc that must be part of the long term use of the development and a covenant is the only method to ensure this happens afte the developer skips town.
But what gets built, the color, facades, floor plans, roof shingle type, in short, the uniformity – THAT is dictated and controlled by the developer to maximize his return. If what you are trying to say is true (i.e., the developer run HOA is just a governmental issue NOT a profit issue with the developer) then the HOA would be completely turned over to the homeowners as they move in and control would NOT be specifically retained by the developer. Frankly, I don’t see why you fight this so much – there is really nothing wrong with him maximizing profit. But we will always end up with little boxes that way.
You have failed to convince me that had there been no downzoning there would be fewer developer run HOAs and cookie cutter communities – it is clear that the opposite would be true – that would obviously have pleased you.
I own a beige, boring and vinyl-clad condo. It looks just like the one next to it. I bought it because it was the cheapest thing on the market when I absolutely needed to buy something. When I bought it, I appreciated that it was in my price range specifically BECAUSE it was beige, boring and vinyl-clad.
Oddly enough…I’m completely un-offended by any characterization you’ve made. No idea why I would be.
Sorry Eric, but if you now admit that developers don’t stay to control the HOAs of their built communities (entirely predictable that you’d whip out the “take the money and run” talking point), then guess what? They aren’t DEVELOPER RUN anymore, are they? They are resident controlled, usually before full build out, and can then have their documents amended or altered like those of any other corporate entity, through a process and a vote. To call them “developer run” is a misnomer for the sake of your desired rant, and that says a lot more about your motives in pushing an idea than mine in supposedly defending one–the fact of the matter is that they are not what you persist in calling them.
It is also a fact that government mandates their formation. Sorry, but true.
HOAs also don’t happen until there are PEOPLE in the “cookie cutter little boxes” (you DO say that when you go door to door out of district to tell the masses how to vote, right? lol) They don’t determine the design standards, the colors, anything–that’s all part of the approval process (whether administrative or legislative), on paper, at a table or dais, before a single house is ever built and OCCUPIED by someone who is then yes, subject to the HOA documents created as part of that approval process.
So, sorry, wrong again.
You may indeed sit on an HOA board, and good for you. That doesn’t mean you understand a thing about how they are currently mandated, nor when and how they move to resident control, and so on.
So knock yourself out on developers “running” HOA boards that they are no longer present on, determining colors that have already been settled in the county building months or years before ground was ever broken.
As for if there had been no downzoning, developers would have cut things up? Again, you leave out a crucial step: the preceding owner would have had to sell. Maybe they already had lots recorded, as two supervisors who voted for the 2000 downzoning did, or maybe they would have developed by right. Either way, the process is expensive enough that if an owner chooses to sell, they often sell before division simply because of the cost of doing so in relation to the potential increase in value to the property at sale.
What the downzoning did, and you keep ignoring, is make it more difficult for some one individual to simply buy a lot, and build their own special unique and different habitat–unless they are personally financially able to do so.
Most average people can’t. They need a place to live, and many end up in yours and Jonathan’s “plastic” “cookie cutter” “little boxes”.
Be sure and remind them of that at every opportunity.
The masses need to be educated by the enlightened!
And Ayn Rand had plenty to say about that–lol
Actually Jonathan, I never posted anything about you “blowing up a lab”–this is the first I’ve ever heard of a Jonathan Weintraub doing that. I asked if you were the same Jonathan Weintraub who was active on animal rights, and whose worldview dictated in one of his published online essays that people be called “humyns” so as not to give unearned primacy to “man” in their very name.
Given some of the positions you have taken over the years, I still think that was a reasonable question.
Yes, you guys have written a lot of letters over the years that I’ve taken issue with, many in those days covering sprawl, again completely divorced from the people that live in the houses you don’t like. I have always found that a bit misplaced in people who moved in after I did, but last house on the block syndrome knows no bounds.
I’ve spoken about Ayn Rand (Howard Roark too) in this thread, and you have yet to say why you like her (I hold to my opinion that you really don’t seem to like much of anything, which is rather sad), or what developers have to do with abortion law, or anything else.
“…they transfer to resident control at a certain percentage of buildout–do you honestly think that developers stay on to run HOAs after all the houses are built?”
Of course not – they have made their profit so they then leave and deposit their winnings in the bank. This proves my point. Developer run HOA (and the house designs they mandata) are all about maximizing profits. Maximizing profits does not mesh very well with unique home designs. Now as to you snide comment:
“You honestly don’t know what you’re talking about…”
You forget that I sit on a HOA board. But one that governs least – in other words one that respects what peopel WANT to do with their homes rather than what the developer wants for his pocketbook.
I know that (as usual) you must defend any attack on the development industry with as much gusto as you can muster (including the occasional ad hominem – if the shoe fits, Barb, y’know) but really anybody who has eyes can see what we get with developer controlled HOAs – cookie cutter houses. It is kind of like Malvina Reynold’s Little Boxes except the developers need to wash out all the colors – bad for the bottom line.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2lGkEU4Xs
And again, had there been no downzoning the very few remaining chunks of land would have just been chopped up by developers as well with each development having their own developer run HOA board (oh, that’s right I better stipulate, until AFTER all the houses have been built that is!)
Barbara,
When we first moved here, we wrote a letter to the editor that you didn’t like. You immediately attacked us. You found reference to a Jonathan Weintraub ten years my younger who tried to blow up a college science lab or something like that and you posted comments on line indicating that I was that Jonathan Weintraub. Now you write the following:
Your creativity is wanting. What did Shakespeare say,”there’s nothing new under the sun”? Well there is something new. Finally, you have admitted that you believe it can be dangerous to espouse an ideology that dehumanizes people. I pray that you embrace that epiphany honestly and consistently.
Do you have anything to say about Ayn Rand, Howard Roark, socialized “ownership” of energy companies, architecture, or nanny-state regulation of women’s bodies to protect them from the “abortion industry”? That is the topic of this post after all.
David, the hyperpersonalization may be your reluctance to admit that Jonathan’s animus toward houses other than his own is easily read as toward the people who choose to live in them. You and he both got quite defensive when people asked questions about your scarves–what is the logical conclusion of his deriding of “plastic houses”, especially in a county where some posting on forums also make the leap to “plastic people”? Everything he says is NOT okay simply because he says it. Tell me, when he speaks to your cobloggers who live in plastic homes, does he always point that out to them?
Eric, you are avoiding the FACT that in spite of developers controlling HOAs in their early stages (they transfer to resident control at a certain percentage of buildout–do you honestly think that developers stay on to run HOAs after all the houses are built? You really DO need to educate yourself there, chum) that it is the government that has mandated that all new development be organized into HOAs, and the FACT that by right subdivisions are still development applications that are subject to local GOVERNMENT regulations.
As I said, the kind of thing you’re arguing for is buying a lot (as opposed to contracting for a home in a development) and building to your own design.
And yes, the downzoning made the availability of discrete individual lots a lot more scarce.
You honestly don’t know what you’re talking about in relation to the points you’re trying to make.
Interestingly, Barb, when my development was built (before I moved in) there was no developer mandated building design. I am sorry it irks you so but the HOA and the developer controlling them is a new thing and is all about maximizing developer profit.
As to your new twist of logic, would you like to contend that had there been no downzoning that developers would NOT have done the same thing to every other remaining (the few that remain) subdividable piece of land? Sorry but reality belies your contention.
Nice try at the old elitist “us vs. them” meme. You never tire of that tact do you?
I don’t understand the hyper-personalization here. This really isn’t about you and your house.
That has been my personal experience with residential property over several decades – it’s been the bank or the developer, or even the material supplier that has created impediments to our ability to make independent choices. We’ve been told, for example, that the orientation of a house can’t be altered to maximize passive solar because of “streetscape.” We’ve been told that a construction loan is too risky because of unconventional design (“people like the colonials”). It’s even been difficult to obtain concrete for DIY projects at times because of large developments monopolizing distributors, and impossible to get some kinds of fabrication done locally for a small project.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some ridiculous government regulations. But as far as culpability for the de facto enforcement of sameness, that’s not so much the problem.
Yes, Jonathan, I’m aware that vinyl is a petroleum product.
Is it illegal?
Do you own and drive a car? How far is it from your home to your work?
Real people live in those “plastic houses” you like to sniff and sneer about, Jonathan, so no, you don’t get a pass from me on talking trash about the houses as if they are merely objects and not someone’s home. You’re talking about the people too, but keep it up: the rhetoric certainly steered me away from some of the more virulent self-interests in Loudoun when I moved in and read the regular poison spew in the press.
Eric, a by-right development is still a development project. The only difference is that it is an administrative approval process as opposed to a legislative one, so as long as it MEETS ALL COUNTY REGULATIONS AND GUIDELINES, it is signed off on by staff instead of put through hearings and a vote.
What you’re talking about is buying a lot and building or contracting to have built your own individual building–which is what I believe David and Jonathan did.
Not only is that out of reach for many people financially (sneer from on high, boys), with the last downzoning, how many individually saleable pre-recorded lots are out there for the opportunity? They can’t be created as easily with the 20 and 40 ac minimums required to start any such process, so the opportunity to do what people “ought” to be doing simply isn’t there.
IOW, you guys don’t really know what you’re talking about with land use, and you’re criticizing people for not doing what the government regulated ability to do prevents, while sitting there having yours.
Looks good, fellers.
Especially when you try to pass the same old rant off as an around the barn literary exercise.
Barb, you can point to the government as the boogieman for all that is drab and uniform but the fact of the matter is all the new developments I have seen (at least in western loudoun County) over the past few years were pretty much by-right and precluded the purchaser from bringing in his own home design and builder. In short, if you wanted to avoid the cookie cutter house and design and build something uniquely yours, you would be cutting into the developer profits too much (heck, when you charge $800,000 for something that costs $150K to build you can see why). “No, Mr. Homeowner-to-be, here is your choice in siding. You can choose Shaker Beige instead of Concord Ivory if you REALLY want to stand out… Oh, and don’t consider doing anything fancy with your yard either. We, the developer, will retain HOA control of your home for the foreseeable future.” Oh yeah, Barb, I remember, its the GOVERNMENT that’s the problem.
Barbara,
Vinyl is a petroleum product. Get it? Own a petroleum company, sell vinyl siding…lots of it.
I don’t understand why you personalize this. It seems to be all about you. Honestly, it isn’t.
David, I can agree with your last sentence, which is why I often see little merit in some of Jonathan’s “points”.
The connections are often so tenuous, and seem to uniformly end up at the same place. Does he actually like anything? It’s sometimes hard to tell.
As for Rand, she certainly was a hardcore, and quite firm in her opinions.
However, one thing I took away from her books was that things honestly gained were honestly worthy of respect, whether it was the filet mignon earned and enjoyed by the business magnate, or the hamburger lunch of a workman.
I don’t recall her making fun of people for wearing working clothes OR tuxedos, unless they weren’t working, or had nothing specific to celebrate.
Jonathan spends a lot of time on things like the vinyl houses of the kind of people he doesn’t seem to like either because they live in those neighborhoods, and it always astonishes me from someone so (seemingly) concerned with treating all people well. Does he actually like anything? It’s sometimes hard to tell.
Since you put it that way, it would be fair to say that throughout her writing Ayn Rand denigrates and expresses snide disdain for “what other people have” – their food, their clothing, their housing, their work, their lives. This is generally because “what they have” is not chosen for themselves but by an external power. Those who see the possibility of something better than the drab conformity – and genuine, individual choice – are the heroic figures.
At least this is my recollection. I wonder why her mother didn’t teach her to behave better.
At any rate, what I liked about this post is that it exposes the hypocrisy and clever manipulation of the “choice” meme. Depending on the objective of the propaganda mill in question, the Truth(tm) is either “nanny-state good” (women aren’t really people with agency) or “nanny-state bad” (everyone owns an oil company! and makes energy policy!) and the sheeple Rand denigrates nod obediently along.
We see an example of this manipulation in practice right here, although only a tiny portion of this post is about the housing market: Drab conformity enforced by “the market” is good, because – what was it? Medieval woodcuts all look the same, too. But drab conformity enforced by “central planning” is bad. Just because, I guess.
Maybe we could start by acknowledging that anything taken to dogmatic extremes is likely to produce bad results.
Eric, in your haste to chant your usual meme you miss the boat again: did you know that, along with many design guidlelines, HOAs are mandated for all new development?
Not by the developers, but by the county?
The county also tried for a while to force some by rights into being annexed into existing HOAs, but backed off when it was pointed out that they could not do so by law. That’s when they adopted the “must form one”.
Some areas (often ones that have been “historic” for longer than we have, and in some cases for more significant reasons than simply the vernacular) list the types of materials and colors that may be used–that’s where you get paint store or drycleaners in New England that you can’t tell what it is because it is in a little cedar shake cotteg, with no sign (visually ugly).
The discussion on placement of mailboxes in relation to driveways actually occurred during a “rural village” application process on Evergreen Mills.
“…right down to preferred colors and materials, and spacing of mailboxes in relation to driveways in order to “build community” by attempting to thus foster neighbor interaction at mailboxes.”
Sounds like a developer run HOA to me.
I have read Fountainhead Jonathan. Also We The Living, Atlas Shrugged.
And Howard Roark would go insane in any “smart” county that hobbled him with some of the central planning that is now commonplace, right down to preferred colors and materials, and spacing of mailboxes in relation to driveways in order to “build community” by attempting to thus foster neighbor interaction at mailboxes.
I realize that you may need to frame it as me “not getting it”, and that’s fine.
What I really seldom get is the trip all around the mulberry bush that seems to have as its major (and often only) point the opportunity to denigrate the homes and communities of some faceless “other” beyond yourself.
No one is forcing you to live in a soulless vinyl “cookie cutter”, are they? And in future, the homes of today may be looked back on longingly as oases of personal freedom if everyone is cohoused in dorm pods above rail lines centuries into the future.
The homes you love to hate may be as nostalgicly beloved by some in that future as a rowhouse in Alexandria is today by those who so publicly hate their modern (and much more affordable) counterparts in Ashburn or Sterling (or Sandusky or Provo or Encino).
I guess my main distaste is that recurring snide disdain for the choices and possessions of others.
Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to make fun of what other people have? Their clothing, houses, etc?
Barbara,
In order to understand the post, the reader needs to be familiar with Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. Have you read it? If so, put yourself in Howard Roark’s shoes.
I tried my best to be clear. Sorry you didn’t get it. I’m planning to write a follow up. Maybe the follow up will clarify.
Sorry–big fan, as opposed to bog. Bog seems to be where your happy thoughts go when you look at someone else’s home.
But Jonathan, when are you planning to say, as the title promises, WHY you like Ayn Rand?
All I hear here is another set of hyperpersonalized analogies.
And question for you, re the “everything looks the same” mantra: seems to me that if one looks at medieval woodcuts, tryptichs, etc, everything in those looks the same too. Go to sections of any major east coast city that has retained its townhouse neighborhoods from the post bellum to the turn of the century–they all look pretty much alike too.
Any age will produce a certain amount of sameness, don’t you think?
You have chosen to live on the edge of a major metropolitan area–not everyone will live in a historic home here (many of which are quite similar to others of the same period).
As for what is built currently, aren’t you a bog fan of strict zoning and planning? Guess what: it produces a certain amount of sameness with that government central planning as a guidleine!
Promoted. Very interesting observations.