Within every liberal, there's a totalitarian dictator, screaming to get out, to paraphrase the great David Horowitz. Nowhere is that more evident than in the case of Michigan's ambitious left-wing Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

She's declared war on garden seeds, forbidding their purchase from big box retailers now that there's a pandemic on, arbitrarily claiming they're not "essential."

This, from a governor who claims, of all things, to be a green, putting "climate change" at the "heart" of her governorship. That's some green — a green who advocates for brown, at least among the locals. Seems that changing the world "one act at a time," not to mention "growing local" and "going organic," isn't as important to her as being a tyrant and winning the approval of the Democratic establishment in D.C. Oh, and she's widely touted as vice presidential material for doddering Joe Biden. Imagine her giving orders at a national level with this record.

The Federalist cites her as one of America's self-outed "little tyrants." The American Spectator cites her as the "worst governor in America." We hope she's proud of herself.

The latest news is that angry Michiganders have launched a recall petition to throw her out.

This is precisely what needs to happen, just as "change" is probably going to eventually happen to Xi Jinping of China in the post-COVID-19 world that's sure to come.

It makes no sense whatsoever. Michigan is an agricultural state. Farming is still big. Growing things is a Michigan tradition — some really nice things, like asparagus, dairy, cherries, apples, berries, corn, cucumbers, tons of wonderful crops and livestock products. The state produces so plentifully that it exports. One of my cousins is an asparagus farmer on the west side and exports to Japan. The state has magnificent botanical gardens, such as the renowned Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park of Grand Rapids. Things grow well there.

In a crisis, as in World War II, it's also a tradition to plant victory gardens, to help lessen the load on supply chains, as well as keep people fed with alternative sources such as fresh and utterly organic vegetables.

With food shortages on the horizon — pork, chicken are already calling trouble — it's about as counterproductive as it gets.

More specific still, anyone who knows anything about gardening (and Whitmer doesn't) knows that one must plant seeds at specific times, which means that her order forbidding their purchase now means the seeds will probably die, same as any agricultural product left out too long.

What a hideous waste.

And as many news reports have mentioned, planting seeds is a perfect tool for encouraging social distancing. Bored, housebound people with a patch of land or a few pots ought to be encouraged to start little gardens; there's nothing like them for focusing attention as they watch things grow. I garden all the time, and it's an amazing little pleasure to tend and care for little plants one grew as a result of one's labors. To Whitmer, it's little more than Michael Bloomberg's contemptuous idea of gardening: put a seed in the ground, and let what happens happen.

Petty little diktats like Whitmer's are profoundly unenforceable, and instead of encouraging obedience to the law and the general project of getting rid of the pandemic, they encourage the opposite: widespread flouting of the law. When the law has no credibility and stupid orders are in the substance, you can bet that public support for all of them is going to go downhill.

This isn't Whitmer's first instance of tyrannical stupidity, either. In a bid to Get Trump, she first threw out a diktat against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients, praised by Trump as a possible treatment, without knowing what she was dictating about, and then reversed herself, obviously hearing from locals who needed it to save the lives of their loved ones.

Now she's throwing out a string of diktats, including an irrational war on garden seeds. Yes, throw her out, if for nothing else than to send a message to the other Democrats about tyranny not paying. Whitmer's nothing but a bad seed who's got to go.

Image credit: Julia Pickett via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.