Remember the story last fall about the remains of a suicide by hanging being mistaken for a Halloween decoration? I didn't recall that it happened at a Staten Island commune called Ganas. Now, the leader of the commune is recovering from gunshot wounds administered to him by an old, cast-out member.
Nice home page. Ganas sounds like the kind of place I might have thought cool once upon a time. Be that as it may, my skepticism about libertarianism nudges closer and closer to outright rejection. If a government based on some kind of shared cultural values doesn't lean on folks once in a while, they'll get together and find someone else to do it. Better that a freely elected government like in most western democracies do the leaning.
Even where there is a little leaning, we get the occasional willing suspension of common sense. Were I to find myself a neighbor of a Ganas-like commune, I might be scouring eBay for good deals on 12-foot barbed-wire fences. Particularly if I had kids. (For some reason, Ganas, as they admit, has few. Hmmm.) By the way, guest night at Ganas next Friday is canceled.
I suppose it's not the commune's fault if an embittered ex-member came back and shot the leader. But it seems as if the laid-back, alternative atmosphere the home page touts is a facade for the what we so often see in 'alternative communities'. Human nature abhors a vacuum, and in these kinds of situations, it is rare that a charismatic figure doesn't wind up sucking people in. From the Times (of London).
Yet it has since become clear that paradise has its pitfalls. Several Ganas members are reported to have committed suicide, among them a man who hanged himself from a tree on the property and remained there for days because his corpse was mistaken for a Hallowe’en decoration.
Last week Johnson, a minister’s daughter from Virginia, was described as initially drawn to the commune’s peace-loving principles, but turned out to be mentally unstable.
She was eventually asked to leave. She subsequently sued the group for allegedly forcing her to have lesbian sex and for exposing her to sexually transmitted diseases.
She complained about several dwarves who were members of Ganas and at one point alleged that some female residents were ordered “to sleep with the midgets”.
Ordered? My, my. Then again, in a way, it sounds familiar--like a pseudo-socialistic government in miniature. If the allegation is true, perhaps it was just the redistribution of a certain kind of wealth (and isn't sex becoming more and more a consumer item?) to "the little people."