I was talking to a friend a couple weeks ago over beers. While the conversation wasn’t political (thank God) he did say what I already believe; that most American expats in the Philippines are of a more conservative bent.

There are a variety of reasons. Many guys first discovered the Philippines while serving in the military. So there’s a lot of ex-career military guys here and I suppose you can make the case that ex-career military guys are slightly right leaning and big fans of Atilla the Hun.

But the biggest reason seems to be an idea I hear often; that the U.S. (and other Western) governments have so restricted personal liberties that many of the expats here were looking to move to a place where they felt freer.

Thinking about it, I would have to say that most major issues plaguing the Western world do come down to the notion of individual rights vs. the rights of others. Do I have the right to own whatever I want in my own home (gun rights) vs. does society have the right to not get shot in the ass by your rights (gun control).

Do I have the right to do whatever I want with my own body (abortion rights) vs. society’s rights to force me to have the child and dump it into the social safety net.

Do I have the right to sleep with whomever I want in the privacy of my own bed vs. society’s need to know who we’re all sleeping with (and in the case of Filipinas) how young she is and how often we’re – you know, sleeping.

The list goes on but if we continue on this path we will eventually get to the most important individual right imaginable, and one that I get really hot over; do I have the right to burn leaves in my yard?

When I was a kid back in the 20s most people burned their leaves. I am sure there were laws in place but come on, they were just leaves; they weren’t a protected species. Some nuts said that burning leaves polluted the air, but that struck me as crazy since I always liked the smell of burning leaves. How could that be bad for you.

By the time I grew up enough to own my own home, leaf burning was completely verboten. I had the largest oak tree in my neighborhood. Every fall it dropped a ton of leaves; enough to fill 10-15 leaf bags full. We’d throw the bags into the garage and put them out with the recycling a bag or two at a time because you couldn’t put them all out at once without getting a big overcharge and I’m fundamentally a cheap bastard. Each year it occurred to me that an hour of burning and problem solved, but no – we had to save the goddamn environment as if leaves were the primary cause of lung cancer or something.

While there are laws on the books here in the Philippine, and the society is getting more serious about them, in reality people express their individual right to burn leaves, debris, trash, dead animals, or whatever. Janet loves gardening and gathers her clippings weekly into a small, neat pile to burn. Watching her do this I can’t help but think that it’s a hell of a lot easier than buying something to put the crap into, have a government agency waste gas to pick it all up, dump it all into a landfill where it will decompose and probably spontaneously combust.

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I have to say that I like watching Janet burn the leaves. Just as when I was a kid, I like the smell and mostly like that I don’t have to rake up the shit. My back should be the protected species.

So, despite not being all that conservative, I do like the individual freedom in the Philippines. I’m a pretty quiet person but if I chose to make noise, play my guitar or the stereo loud – I can. Back in Portland, if I went into my yard and cut a loud fart, my neighbors would report me and I’d be arrested for noise pollution.

So let’s review the individual freedoms we have in the Philippines. I can drive like a maniac. Not only can I drive that way, it’s expected. I can sing karaoke at 3:00AM. Yes, President Duterte says not to do that but even he’s not powerful enough to stop it.

I can burn the aforementioned trash, let my dog roam the countryside and crap wherever it wants, shoot off fireworks even without a holiday. Guys smoke here in public, despite the fact that Dumaguete is a smoke free city. Guys get hammered and stumble around town. I can sleep with whomever I want, and, you know, sleep as much as I want. OK, I can’t do this, since you know, I’m married and Janet is a bolo master, but theoretically a guy can do it 🙂

But there is a irony here that guys express often. Sure, we can come here and do whatever we want. But guess what – so can the next guy. So, your neighbor sings karaoke at 3:00AM, burns leaves and cuts loud farts. And some of these conservative, individual rights loving guys aren’t happy about it and complain to their Barangay Captain. I have no real conclusion but as I said, it’s an irony.

All these thoughts have come to a head recently as Janet and I bought a fairly large lot. Back in Portland the trend was for larger houses on much smaller lots. There were a lot of reasons for this trend including the rising costs of land but I think the real reason was the growing recognition of what was the point in having a nice big back yard when you couldn’t make noise, dance naked or burn shit there.

Here we’ll have a nice sized lot, I’ll have a workshop and in our walled yard we’ll be able to burn leaves, cut loud farts or dance naked as much as we want. Life is good in the Philippines!