The Freedom to Air Your Laundry

Naw, I'm not talking about free speech!

I'm talking low tech. Clothes lines.

If you are young, you may not remember them. Today you stick you wet, just-washed (pre-faded, pre-ripped) designer jeans into a machine called a "Dryer" and, for a small price in electricity and depreciation, it gets rid of the water.

But clothes lines worked too, and at far less cost. They were solar and wind powered. No kidding. Some people say that clothes hung out to dry on a line even smelled better than those emerging from dryers. That could be the sweet smell of nostalgia they detect. I'm agnostic on that.

What I do believe, however, is that in the land of the free and the home of the brave it ought to be your choice to hang out your laundry. No one should be able to tell you that you can't.

And they shouldn't be able to zone your clothes line out of existence, which is nothing more than a bunch of snooty elitists using the power of government to gang up on people they look down upon.

In North Caroline, the state legislature has decided to come down on the side of the snooty elitists.

... Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat, got a little bill (H 1353) through the House that would prohibit cities and counties from adopting blanket prohibitions on clotheslines.

The idea, according to Harrison, is to allow people who want to save energy by hanging out their laundry (rather than use their dryers) even if some folks in the community turn up their nose at the idea. Originally, the bill started out as an effort to keep homeowners associations from adopting restrictive covenants prohibiting clotheslines, but Harrison took that out of the bill after getting a lot of resistance.

So the bill came before the Senate Commerce Committee today … and it was doomed.

Doomed? Say it isn't so!

... you really knew the bill was going down when Senators started openly mocking it.

“Is there any kind of a dress code required when you’re hanging out your clothes,” asked Sen. Tony Rand. The question was a sideswipe at what was being whispered around the committee table: who wants to see their neighbors’ unmentionables? (Or, not to put too fine a point on it, who wants to see a senator's unmentionables?)

As other members asked questions of staff, a few Senators had a separate dialogue going.

“So what they’re saying is if it’s your own property we can string our panties up,” Sen. Debbie Clary said to Graham, prompting Graham to reply, “String it up baby!”

Clary continued, questioning how people down at the beach might feel about watching other people’s undies flap in the ocean breeze.

“I can just see Clark stringing up his underwear on the line right outside the beach house,” Sen. Debbie Clary said, referring to Sen. Clark Jenkins.

There's more but you get the general idea. People who hang out their laundry to dry in the sun and wind are to be mocked. Preserving and protecting the right of local governments to intrude on your freedom is to be encouraged.

Sure, it's a little thing, but real freedom is built upon the little things like that. When they start taking the little freedoms away from you, the big freedoms are on the way out too.