Yesterday I posted here and linked to Facebook a commentary entitled “Today’s Wild West Land Grab” about the expansion of the Mother Lode Land Trust. This engendered an endless discussion about the PG&E land deal and its constrained and complex circumstances. While I don’t question the legality of the decision, I question the system that preordained that outcome. Since my Facebook introduction referenced the Homestead Act, is not surprising that one response noted that most land in the USA was a transfer from government to people or businesses. While this is generally true, there is more to the story.
Many of the Colonial period people who settled the Appalachian Mountains weren’t proper enough people to enter through Charlestown or other ports. They landed in the more tolerant Philadelphia, traveled inland and then south into the hills of the Carolinas, etc. The far west was settled extensively by escaped slaves. In the 1850’s some feared that Colorado was to become the first black state. What these two groups have in common is that they were both squatters and both loved freedom. What title did the Oregon Trail pioneers have to the land they settled considering that Oregon wasn’t US territory then? Not all land rights come from the government. Although despised by the globalist and globalist environmental elite, there is a long American tradition based on freedom and private property. As I’ve noted before, this country was originally settled by people who had lost their grazing rights under the Enclosure Acts and understood this relationship.
When the British said no more settlement beyond the Appalachians we fought a war for the right to move west. These were not Eric Winslow’s hobgoblins, but people who dreamed of a homestead instead of a city factory job. A century later immigrants would give up education to work and save money to buy land. This country has always followed the policy of maximum land and home ownership. From FDR setting up national mortgage pools to Richard Nixon authorizing additional cutting in National Forests to reduce the price of lumber and therefore housing, this has always been our national policy. But in recent years the globalists and environmentalists have found common ground in schemes to tie up land ownership and use. The rich get richer and many environmentalists glorify saving the earth from its inhabitants.
Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett
Mark, the right to transfer ownership of land and to give away or sell development rights is part of every private property owner's bundle of rights. So you are complaining about a system that allows people to exercise their property rights. That's pretty ironic.
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