Leaf blowers have no place in a civilized society

It was a sad day this spring when Dobbs Ferry joined hundreds of towns and cities nationwide in enacting a seasonal ban on gas-powered leaf blowers.
   Don’t get me wrong: I hate these machines, and had been pushing for years for a ban. What was profoundly sad was that the ban was necessary – that people had so lost sight of the idea of community that they would even consider using such a machine.
     Think about it. You’ve got two choices for cleaning up leaves or other debris – you can do it quietly, with rake and broom, or you can use a machine that could damage your hearing, destroys the peace of numerous neighbors, pollutes horribly with its crude engine, kicks up dust and decayed animal feces and other delightful stuff for the neighboring children to breathe, and blasts away topsoil, increasing erosion and necessitating the use of toxic fertilizers. And the benefits, in time saved, are, at best, slight.
     What civilized person, what person with even the slightest interest in community, in being a good neighbor, would dream of EVER using such a machine?
     To a great extent, I’m guessing, you can look at a person’s politics for the answer. Right-wingers, with their narrow interest in guns, lower taxes, enriching the rich, and inflicting their “values” (read: biases) on the rest of us, show little interest in community. Most liberals wouldn’t touch a leaf blower with a 10-foot rake. But here’s the puzzling part: some people whose hearts are in the right place politically still use these machines (or hire landscapers to use them, which is just as bad). I simply do not understand “leaf blower liberals.”
    Some people say a seasonal ban is a good compromise, but that is nonsense. There is a time for compromise, and a time to look at something and say, This is a mistake. Some inventions add immeasurably to the human condition – penicillin, caller ID, DVRs. But some, like leaf blowers, have no place in a civilized society.
     It was highly instructive to attend town hearings on proposed bans. Landscapers were the most vocal in opposition, of course. But they really brought this on themselves. In search of a year-round business where none existed, there were happy to come in, week in and week out, leaves or no leaves, and blow dust around, occasionally nabbing a lone leaf. Without this abuse, the outcry would have been far more muted. And the existence of landscapers created the problem in another way: many homeowners would surely balk at using the machines themselves, because they’d feel first-hand what an assault it was on their neighbors. But then they casually delegate the task to landscapers, not making the connection that the damage – to serenity, to health, to environment – is identical.
    A common argument of leaf-blower apologists is the slippery-slope theory: what are you going to ban next, you pinko troublemaker – lawnmowers? Coffee grinders? Hair dryers? No, we’re talking about leaf blowers. Beware the slippery-slope argument: reasonable discussion can slide right off it.