I like pondering this question. Sadly, I can’t find the link for proper attribution. But the blogger talked about a statement made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a 1938 session of Congress. Here it is:
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.”
Whew! Sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? By casually stepping into a new form of government called the Homeowners Association movement, are we not giving away all of our Constitutional freedoms without giving it a second thought?
Sure, we’d all like to live in neighborhoods where property values aren’t brought down by some goofball with the muscle car on blocks and a trash can that never leaves the curbside. But at what cost? In the 1930s millions of people joined the Nazi party because they truly thought their membership was bettering themselves. They were truly enthusiastic about where their new party was leading them.
But are we going to sit back some day and ask ourselves, “did we once have something very special in this country, and we gave it all away?”
Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association
“A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither” Thomas Jefferson