By Tom DeWeese
Most Americans today tend to think of private property simply as a home – the place where the family resides, stores their belongings, and finds shelter and safety from the elements. It’s where you live. It’s yours because you pay the mortgage and the taxes. Most people don’t give property ownership much more thought than that.
There was a time when property ownership was considered to be much more. Property, and the ability to own and control it, was life itself. The great economist John Locke, whose writings and ideas had a major influence on our nation’s founders, believed that “life and liberty are secure only so long as the right of property is secure.”
John Locke advocated that if property rights did not exist, then the incentive for an industrious person to develop and improve property would be destroyed; that the industrious person would be deprived of the fruits of his labor; that marauding bands would confiscate by force the goods produced by others; and that mankind would be compelled to remain on a bare-subsistence level of hand to mouth survival because the accumulation of anything of value would invite attack.
In short, human civilization would be reduced to the level of a pack of wolves and eventually cease to exist because a lack of control over your own actions would cause fear and insecurity. Private property ownership, Locke argued, brought stability and wealth to individuals, leading to a prosperous society of man.
From the very beginning, the United States was guided by the idea of private property ownership. It was written into our governing documents. Property and freedom – one cannot live without the other. James Madison said, “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.” John Adams argued, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
America, be aware, private property is quickly being destroyed across the nation, and note the growing lawlessness beginning to surround you. The fear of climate change has become the excuse for government to grow and dictate how every strip of land will be used.
Have you ever wondered why government now focuses so hard on the environment? That’s because the environment does not recognize political boundaries. The environment crosses rivers, fields, and mountains, all of which cross over national borders, state borders, county borders, city borders, and the boundary lines of your yard! That fact has given massive new power to those forces that seek to change our way of life and system of government. Who can stand in the way with a climate crisis at hand? So goes the argument.
As a result, the pack of wolves is quickly raiding every foot of this nation. Lawlessness controls our society as incentive, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship give way to fear of a government tyranny that drives for control, regardless of clear constitutional rights and the legal system that was designed to protect them.
Step by step, freedom dies, leaving shattered dreams, as tyranny grows.
The Biden cabal issued Executive Order 14008 at the beginning of its hold on America. The order, titled America the Beautiful, established a plan to lock away 30 percent of American land by 2030, under the pretext of protecting the planet. The federal government already has 270 million acres under its control, now under 30×30 it’s driving for another 680 million to be locked away from private use.
Eminent domain land grabs are turning millions of acres of vital farmland over to corporations like Blackrock and Vanguard – to feed their own vision of how human society must function. As more and more farmland disappears under wind turbines and solar panels, which produce next to nothing for our power grid, there’s little room to grow the food we need to survive. As a result, thousands of farmers are forced to just give up.
Other property owners in rural America are facing a new challenge – the elimination of vital dams that have controlled the flow of water, opening new land for productive use. But, says the climate change mantra, those dams aren’t natural, so they are a danger to the environment. They must go. Gone is more private property, a reliable water source, and the individual’s ability to thrive for their own goals.
In our once-vibrant cities, chaos is taking control. Private property ownership is under attack. In the name of Smart Growth your dream home could soon be banned as the space is being taken over by public housing projects.
Small businesses, the very foundation of our free market economy, are under attack. It’s bad enough that small retail businesses must now contend with the growing anarchy of thieves simply rushing in and grabbing any items they choose, as law enforcement is forced to stand by and do nothing. But what about the local restaurant that has always featured your favorite meal? Now, in the name of climate change, the government is moving to ban the stoves on which they cook the meals. And what would they be able to cook now that government is driving to ban beef and dairy? We used to have pesticides to get rid of bugs; now they are destined to be our next dinner!
However, as the federal government continues to rush ahead, state and local governments, designed by our Founders to be the first line of defense against tyranny, are now blindly falling in lockstep with the powermongers.
City councils across the nation are joining non-elected regional councils, which create a one-size-fits-all system of control, ignoring local differences. The regional councils delete the will of the local citizens by piling on federal grants and the federal regulations that come with them. Local elections become meaningless as their city council members surrender to the rule of the regional council and explain there is nothing they can do about it. So why elect them?
Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate NGO known as the “C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.” The goal of the group is “0” meat and dairy consumption by 2030. Also included in the goals are “0” private vehicles owned by citizens, only “1” short-haul air flight per person every 3 years, and “3” new clothing items per person per year. The group is funded mainly by Democrat billionaire Mike Bloomberg, and nearly 100 cities across the world are members. In the U.S., members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New Your City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Seattle. Now as the plan is exposed, the group denies these are “not policy recommendations,” but rather just “different emission-reduction alternatives and long-term urban visions.” But we’re watching them unfold daily. Own nothing and be happy!
In Belmont County, Ohio, the Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) established the Egypt Valley Wildlife Refuge. It encompasses over 28,000 acres of land that cannot be used for private enterprise or homes. As it was being put in place, the ODNR promised local citizens that tourism, lakes, trails, hunting, fishing, etc., would be developed to assist the local economy. None of those promises were fulfilled. And the ODNR pays no taxes or provides services. As a result, the county is in major financial difficulty. The average tax income loss for the county is $8,932,000 that would have gone to pay for schools, roads, law enforcement and public services. Citizens of the country suffer from a lack of local businesses, food services, and products.
In Pataskala, Ohio, a small rural community of about 17,000, a massive solar panel assembly plant is being built. It will employ over 800 people to assemble solar panels with material from China. Why is this a problem? Well, that’s in the details. You see, the lead company in the project, called Illuminate USA, isn’t really a company. It’s a shell designed to get around any future US regulations that would prevent a foreign company from owning property. 49% of Illuminate USA is owned by LONGI, a partner with Invenergy – a Chinese corporation. It’s all a shill designed to pretend these solar panels are “American Made.” Of course, the mayor and city council of Pataskala see dollar signs and are allowing this plant to move forward, in spite of the fact that a huge number of local citizens oppose the plan, fearing that it will drastically change the entire atmosphere of their rural community. The mayor is calling such citizen opponents “Radicals.”
In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed HB271 into law as part of her drive to enforce ambitious climate change goals for the state. On the same day, she signed HB5120 to take power over green energy projects from the local community government and give it to the Michigan Public Service Commission. Essentially, these two bills have removed local control over land use. Again, state regulations are being used to eliminate local control.
Many parents are now beginning to understand that the public-school curriculum is little more than propaganda for climate change. Students have really become victims of this sinister plot to change society. As a result, all over the world, young people are being radicalized and encouraged to take drastic action against our entire way of life.
“STOP OIL” is a major nongovernmental organization (NGO) training students to lay on highways and block cars from passing. The goal, of course, is to make driving more difficult, resulting in people abandoning their gas-powered cars.
Even worse, in museums around the world, another NGO called “DECLARE EMERGENCY” is leading attacks on precious art, claiming we spend money worshipping the past rather than focusing on stopping climate change. In the past year, climate change radicals have defaced DaVinci’s “Mona Lisa,” Degas’ “Little Dancer,” and Monet’s “Haystacks.” Hate of our society, free enterprise, and private property are at the root of the demonstrations.
Most recently, two activists of DECLARE EMERGENCY charged into the United States National Archives, where the original copies of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are on display. They smeared red powder on the glass covering the constitution and declared, “We are determined to foment a rebellion. We all deserve clean air, water, food and a livable climate.”
And finally, there is this situation. In a Washington, D.C. court a major case was heard and the decision could seriously affect anyone who would speak out in opposition to the climate propaganda that now surrounds us. Michael Mann, a climate scientist who is one of the major promoters of the questionable climate change fear tactics, filed suit against two scientists who had openly questioned Mann’s credibility. A jury awarded Mann a million dollars in damages. This is an absolute attack on free speech and the ability for anyone to question scientific findings.
Is it then a surprise that Senator Ted Cruz is probing ongoing efforts to quietly train federal judges on the Left’s climate change agenda? The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, funded by left-wing nonprofits, is quietly training judges nationwide on climate change litigation. So, don’t you dare question any of their policies, or it may be jail for you!
History has shown not a single success from top-down government control, whether socialist, communist, or today’s drive for a global Great Reset. All we’ve gained are a legacy of broken promises, poverty, misery, and the inevitable tyranny that follows. Yet, the Siren’s Song continues to draw its desperate believers. Today’s drive to eliminate free enterprise, individuality, and private property will not lead to an environmental paradise; rather, it will result in shattered American dreams.
F J B
The funny thing about a Presidential Executive Order is that it’s easy to overturn by another Presidential Executive Order when the administration changes hands. Congressional Legislative Orders aren’t so easily overturned.
The Executive branch lately seems to have no difficulty ignoring enacted Laws, and SCOTUS rulings.
Not so fast, according to the courts, if an EO creates an expectation on the part of someone, then the EO can’t be over turned.
In other words, if the EO provides benefits to someone, then the EO is permanent. Even better than a law, which can be cancelled by another law.
I was a geologist working on projects in rural Nevada when Jimmy Peanut Carter started the take-away of lands. He used the Roadless Study Area decree to deny road repair permits, then, when impassable, declare the area to be “Roadless”. Enter Dick Carver, a Nye County Commissioner and life-long Democrat (Democrat with a copy of the Constitution in his pocket) and the Nye County Militia. Where is the next Dick Carver?
Carter did that? I had thought it was Clinton- but you’re probably right.
You’re right, Joseph. Clinton was President 1993 to 2001. On July 4, 1994, Dick Carver ran his bulldozer over the Belmont Stage road to clean up some damaged areas, and the Sagebrush Rebellion saga began. Carter began the initial Roadless Area initiative.
G’Day Ron,
“…Belmont Stage road…”
Is that the road that leads over to Manhattan, where there was an operating gold mine in the 1990’s? (Population at the time was either 43 or 45.)
Overwrought post. Not that I am a Biden fan given Bidenomics, the southern border, and his GoM leasing law breaking shenanigans.
But Mann v Steyn punitive damage ‘theft’ has nothing to do with Biden ‘land theft’. And Mann will lose on the appeal Steyn already filed. The controlling SCOTUS case is State Farm v Campbell. Steyn should have used me as a pro bono attorney rather than representing himself.
And much of Biden’s EO nonsense can by reversed by Trump 47’s pen on Jan 21, 2025.
And the EPA’s new heavy vehicle emission reg is a joke. They just mandated significantly increasing something that does not and never will meaningfully exist, BEV class 8 long haul truck tractors. That won’t end well for the EPA.
The lemmings are jumping off the cliff.
There is a lot to complain about. But mashing it all together IMO isn’t the way to go even if it emotively feels good.
Snipers wait for a single kill shot on a single target. Skeptics should be snipers against Biden and ‘climate change’.
Climate change is but one of the weapons that is being wielded against freedom.
Respectfully disagree. In the UK at least, we are well on our way to an Occidental version of the Chinese Social Credit system. The British State quite shamelessly deprives people whose beliefs it dislikes from accessing their money by closing their bank accounts (e.g. Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson).
Look at the squatter’s rights that many cities and states are giving to the homeless.
The ability to issue “Executive Orders” needs to be reigned in.
Obama was a great abuser. (There’s video clip out there of him saying, in effect, “If Congress won’t do what I want then I’ll do it myself.”)
Agree. Obama’s DACA is the most egregious example. Biden has provided many nearly as bad, like GoM oil leases also violating explicit law. But not a clear path forward given Article 2 section one wording. Gives me something to noodle on.
A second thing that needs to be reigned in is federal appellate court injunctions applied nationwide, when by law (article 3 section 1) they all have a limited territorial jurisdiction. As Justice Gorsuch pointed out last week, in the 12 years of FDR there were zero. Since Biden became illegitimate president, there have been about 60. (This was during last week’s mifepristone oral argument.) That is a SCOTUS to do with a clear path forward—just got to find the right case where one Appellate court enjoins nationally and another allows in its Congressionally mandated jurisdiction.
Better dead than red.
That may be the only choice we get.
“Local elections become meaningless as their city council members surrender to the rule of the regional council and explain there is nothing they can do about it. So why elect them?“. It’s the same – well actually it’s worse – in NSW, after state premier Nick Greiner set up the Land and Environment Court. Our local council became dominated by property developers, because they are $-motivated to control council. The fights that ensued made the council more and more disfunctional, until eventually it was sacked and an administrator was appointed. It runs much better now, but a new council election is scheduled, so we will soon be back to the same old fun and games. The same developers that were sacked before will be standing for election. There are major developments gobbling up the shire, many of them opposed by council because there is no infrastructure and no means to supply it, but council gets over-ridden in two different ways. 1. The developer takes them to the Land and Environment Court, which always supports the developer. It doesn’t help that the developers have money and the council doesn’t. 2. State government simply over-rules and orders council to approve development.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the developers all now seem to have connections to China, and that means the CCP.
And if you follow Australia’s federal politics, it is now obvious that prime minister Anthony Albanese is in China’s pocket.
We live in dangerous times.
You favor having society decide on what an individual is allowed to do with his land?
You’re unfamiliar with zoning regulations and building codes?
More socialism to give those who haven’t put in the work the power to control what others do with their property.
Unless the proper bribes are paid of course.
Contra Rud Istvan,
I do not regard this as an “overwrought post”.
Personal attitudes are shaped by personal experiences.
In Australia’s mineral industry, we suffered serious hurt from several losses of fundamental, legislated, granted property rights. On challenge, Courts obfuscated at high cost to us.
I organised a private international conference on property rights in the 1990s, searching for answers. One of the invited speakers was Prof Richard Epstein from Chicago Law School who followed in the shoes of Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase, both authors recommended for reading.
(Is today’s Alex Epstein related? Wondered for years if he was).
…….
IMHO, failure to educate the mind about property rights and their central economic and governance importance is a sign of willing decline to the shambles of socialistic control. Opponents of creeping leftism need to argue from superior knowledge and attitudes. Property rights are right up there. Geoff S
It all began to go south when “liberals” lost sight of “Liberalism”.
Even when the Scarecrow got a brain, he quoted nonsense (it was some corrupted version of the Pythagoras Theorem). You have to actually put valid data into a brain, before it functions properly. I think liberals are brain damaged, so it is impossible for them to ever find their “sight” again.
I place the turning point on the evolution of rewards without risks.
When state support was automatically there when endeavours became too big to fail, that was a key change in risk reward behaviour.
We have had banking support, we are in utilities support, we are in local authorities support, next up will be charities support, oh sorry that is already there at 20% automatically given by state tax payers.
It is not a healthy evolution.
A lot has been made recently of the new discovery that our government is a bazillion trillion dollars in debt, and that there’s no way out. Another item is that the Social Security “Trust Fund” is hitting $zero very soon.
The Federal Government has a lot of assets to pledge against these debts, mainly land and other real estate. A partial fix for the Social Security problem is to give the SS system control over some of this huge landhold, to do with as is necessary to keep the old folks in oatmeal and rocking chairs.
One good thing about that is that govt land pays no property tax, and selling it back into private hands would put it back on the tax rolls. Of course, you could always sell it with restrictions, green or whatever, but that makes the property worth less money, and you’d have to sell off more of it to get the same result.
So what would the public say if we sold off, say, Yosemite National Park to Megastrangle Development Corp, and when you drove up to the gate they would ask you for a $30 fee to drive into their park?
Well, the National Park Service currently charges $35, so it would be a good deal, plus the locals or state would be collecting property tax on it, and Megastrangle would probably be putting some of the revenue back into property improvements.
We’d certainly hear much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments from the greenies and big government types, but the public knowing that every unearned dollar budgeted would be putting a dollars worth of real estate on the market might dampen the enthusiasm for deficit spending.
We’ve got a lot of debt, and selling the government landhold back to the citizens is really the only way out.
As I’ve said before elsewhere – we have to stop paying our taxes because we are (knowingly) funding organised crime!
That, unfortunately, is bad advice. The IRS will make it so you wish you payed your taxes. I remember some pretend lawyers saying if you shoot a home invader and he falls down outside–you should drag the body back into your house. That, too, is bad advice. The police will know the body was moved, and they will wonder why you moved it–obviously because you’re guilty.
“A jury awarded Mann a million dollars in damages.”
The actual ‘damage award’ to Mann’s “reputation” was $1. The ‘punitive damages’ were $1,000,000.
It’s being appealed. The US Supreme court has several times in the past considered ‘punitive damages’ should not be more than 10 times the ‘actual’ damages.
MM could finish up with $11. (eleven dollars.)
(Last I heard the gentleman has yet to settle the case he lost in Canada. There’s a family there that could really use the money.)
The great economist John Locke, whose writings and ideas had a major influence on our nation’s founders, believed that “life and liberty are secure only so long as the right of property is secure.”
Locke’s theories made sense to European invaders bent on taking the land of the inhabitants, justified by their lifestyle and culture failing to mirror that of the English. Those superior Limeys felt that the native sachems and caciques were direct counterparts of their own kings, earls and lords but the natives never had leaders with the power to give away their property. Locke felt that “undeveloped” land was free for the taking if the occupier “improved” it. That idea disappeared as soon as the Anglos were in possession. Nobody now has the right to develop and inhabit unused land like that inside freeway clover leafs or anywhere else. The US government lays claim to millions of acres of undeveloped land but Locke’s influence is buried in stories of the so-called Enlightenment, which brought a truly unpleasant form of enlightenment to the residents.
There is no longer any undeveloped land in the way there once was.
Someone or other has by now invested labour and capital in all of it.
The indigenous populations were so small back then relative to the vast landscape that most land was undeveloped and so not the property of anyone.
The continuing myth that the European colonizers encountered an empty continent. Millions lived on it but their economy wasn’t an undeveloped version of the Euro model. The reality of the situation was meaningless anyway. Waves of conquest had washed across Europe and Asia for centuries, justifying literally any form of extermination there and elsewhere. The theories of Locke were reinforced by those of Hobbes, who stipulated that man could not live without the master state in control even though such had been the case for millennia and Leviathan merely made an industry of death. So monsters like Napoleon, Lincoln and Bismarck came to represent state murder as a heroic act.
Name a single place on the planet where waves of conquest had not been washing across since the beginning of time? As to your opinion of Locke and Hobbes, that is as misinformed as is your knowledge of history.
“[It] is consistent with the imperialist/colonialist/racist mindset that, over centuries, has considered that slaves, the colonised, the occupied and the oppressed must accept their just fate, that they have no right to violently resist their slave owners, colonisers, occupiers and oppressors and that, should these lesser beings ever dare to do so, they deserve exemplary punishment … This dehumanising mindset is virtually obligatory for members of the immigrant ethnic group in any settler-colonial state, since no moral framework could justify doing to human beings what must be done to the indigenous population which must be dispossessed, dispersed and, often, exterminated in order for a settler-colonial project to succeed.”
The sad thing is that you are either ignorant of the fact that your precious natives also had slaves, or you just prefer to ignore anything that doesn’t fit into your fanciful opinions of what native life must have been like.
The Europeans didn’t do anything to the natives that they hadn’t been doing to each other for millenia.
If you believe the natives didn’t have any concept of private property, then you know nothing about human nature and history.
PS, I like the way you conflate unused with unowned. You sound like the squatter scum who have been taking over vacant homes.
The Europeans regarded themselves as more advanced morally and ethically than the “primitives” they were displacing. Maybe that’s how they justified killing them and taking their land. Or perhaps the natives deserved that fate since they supposedly did the same to their neighbors. Since there’s a long, long history of this sort of thing, why is there so much concern over the Nazis? Weren’t they just carrying on many centuries of traditional behavior? And aren’t the owners of the art work they looted now passed away and can no longer enjoy it even if impossibly returned? It might not be easy to tell some Irish from English but a similar appearance didn’t mean much when Cromwell did his best to eliminate the Irish entirely from their home. This may be accepted now but isn’t forgotten. There must be some statute of limitations on genocidal murder. The Roman coliseum is a monument to depravity that is visited by thousands of tourists.
Of course the natives of the western hemisphere believed in private property. They knew, however, that no person, a mortal being that can live for only a short time, can claim dominium of the earth, which has existed nearly always and that everyone has a right to live by its bounty.
Wow, you are so deep into your propaganda that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
So you don’t believe the natives thought that they were superior to the other tribes, including the tribe of Europeans? Try reading a little real history. As to killing others, given the limits of their technology, the natives were quite adept at killing anyone who wasn’t a member of their tribe.
Of course you had to bring in the Nazis. Thank you for admitting that you have no real arguments to support your nonsense.
Yes, the history of the world is replete with groups of people killing each other. No matter what nonsense you may have been taught, this trait is not limited to Europeans. As to complaining about the behavior of the Nazis, is it really your opinion that only those who are pure are allowed to oppose them?
As to your mysticism regarding what the natives believed, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong, however you have been so well indoctrinated that I doubt you will ever be able to figure that out for yourself.
I really wish Jefferson had gone with his first impulse in the Declaration of Independence, and given the examples of human rights as “Life, Liberty, and Property.”
This map has been floating around for a while –
I seem to recall the only land the federal government really possesses is the District of Columbia, and you could also say non-state territories such as Guam, Puerto Rico, etc. Everything else belongs to the states. I love the National Parks just as much as the next guy, but really those parks should belong to the states. I thought there was an attempt a few years back to challenge federal possession of national parks, though I don’t know the result of that challenge. I suspect any challenge would be denied because when you have SCOTUS members who don’t know the definition of a woman how are we to expect that they know what is in the Constitution?
In the interest of “equity”, many cities allow squatters to seize houses and makes it nearly impossible for them to be evicted.