Quietly, with little public notice, private property has been
disappearing across America at an alarming rate for more than a
decade.
Property owners are falling under the assault from an almost
unintelligible maze of federal, state, county and local
environmental laws, regulations, programs and taxes. That
government assault is combined with a concerted effort by highly
funded and politically powerful environmental groups.
Using regulations and programs that Sustainable Development; the
Endangered Species Act; wet lands regulations; government land
acquisition programs; Clean Air Act; biological diversity;
forest regulations; land trusts; water-shed protection; heritage
corridors; green ways and eco-regions, the federal government is
rapidly carving up the nation, and removing from use
productive land and resources. In its wake, industries,
farms and American dreams are being destroyed.
The main enforcers of these policies are the National Park
Service, the Army Corp of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service,
National Forest Service, The Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), and 800,000 lawyers. They are aided by the advance
troops of environmental radicals who infest every local
community by scouting out possible targets, and by creating
controversy and legal attacks on businesses, property owners and
developers. No stone is left unturned and no scare tactic
is too outrageous for these well-funded, politically
sophisticated, fanatical, societal misfits.
Groups like the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, the Nature
Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, the Wilderness
Society, National Resources Defense Council and the
Environmental Defense Council provide the legal research and
courtroom advocacy to force property owners into
submission. These groups have become so powerful and
feared that most major businesses will pay them "green
mail" and capitulate to their demands without putting up a
fight. Smaller property owners, farmers, ranchers and
family businesses have little chance to hang on to their
property once the attack begins.
This "ecoligarchy" is funded with federal tax dollars
as well as by private foundations like the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Mellon Foundations, Ford Foundation, Pew
Charitable Trust, W. Alton Jones Foundation, University grants
and the Environmental Grant Makers Association. More dollars
fill their pockets through the selling of "taken" land
as the booty of their legal assault.
As this violence grows against America's most fundamental
right, the ownership of private property, most Americans remain
unaware of their rapidly diminishing rights. This is due
in part to a massive news blackout of any "green"
acquisition. The media manages to either ignore the latest
government taking or describe it in glowing terms as a boon for
the environment. Children in classrooms are taught that
protecting the environment must take precedence over most human
activities. Such propaganda is backed up by a constant flow of
unfounded or unsupported "scientific" reports
declaring environmental Armageddon through ozone holes, global
warming and human consumption.
As a result America's most precious freedom is in steady
retreat. Even with the passing of the Clinton Administration,
more property owners continue to become victims of a cause they
don't understand. But the worst may be yet to come. The
environmental movement has many plans in the works.
If completely implemented, more than fifty percent of all the
land in the entire United States may be shut off from human
activity, leaving little choice for future Americans but to be
herded into specified human habitat areas to live and raise
their families under a central organizing plan call Sustainable
Development. Gone will be private property, free enterprise,
personal choices and dreams.
As incredible is this may seem, it is the reality of what is
occurring in America. The nation's economic system is based on
the ownership of private property. When that right, enshrined in
the Constitution, is gone, America will have fallen victim to
those within its midst, becoming an empty shell, stripped of
access to its natural resources, its farms, and other
enterprises, living under an authoritarian system that is the
antithesis of everything its founding fathers envisioned.
Tom DeWeese is the president of the American Policy Center, an
activist think tank headquartered in Herdon, VA. The Center
maintains an Internet site at
http://www.americanpolicy.org/
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Buy Books
Property Matters: How Property
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by James V. DeLong
Takings: Private Property and the
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