Closed Gates for a Closed Society

The gated compound at Pinnacle was the first such enclave of elitist exclusivity, a subdivision with a fence around it and guards to keep the common people from trampling on the private golf course or trying to get a martini at their swank private country club. Rogers residents might think they're special because they also have Shadow Valley, Saddlebrook and Creekside, but Springdale also has the Churchill gated community that demonstrates its officials clearly have a case of Pinnacle envy and want to share in the anti-democratic vista of the rich and famous in Benton County.

Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin, elected last fall, seems to be leading an effort to repeal the city's 2005 ordinance that prohibits gated subdivisions. He has directed the Bentonville Planning Commission to review the language for a potential ordinance establishing regulations for developing gated communities and abolishing the leveling influence of current design standards that allow undesirables to walk near the domain of the better class of citizens.

Funky Fayetteville has not yet succumbed to the temptation to abandon residential equality and embrace these architectural icons of feudalism. Developers will probably try to continue packing the Planning Commission and change that to accommodate the desires of the financially fortunate to build social fortresses. Fayetteville Economic Development Council Chief Prevaricator Steve Rust will say the city is trying to kill jobs, stop growth, or be just plain unfriendly to business by resisting the desires of the wealthy to hide behind their walls and protect themselves from some imagined class-borne social or economic disease. Chamber CEO Bill Ramsey will once again tell us that business executives will leave and move to Springdale's unregulated wonderland to be closer to Cracker Barrel.

Let us resist that bidness blather and remember the words and wisdom of Walt Whitman, who wrote, "As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons also in New World politics and progress."