Unpack!

Julie Kay Smithson

June 13, 2009

If this question were posed to most Americans today: Would you embrace the concept of losing your property rights and entire region's economy? The answer would be a resounding "No!"

Worded differently -- say, in the form of "protecting" and/or "restoring" a posted "endangered" or "threatened" species of flora or fauna (whether or not any actual proof exists that said poster species is in any danger of harm to its numbers) -- twenty-first century Americans seem unable to register any red flags to themselves.

The "Endangered Species Act," touted as being the best thing since sliced bread for "saving," "protecting" and/or "restoring" things, has actually done very little. It has, however, wreaked utter havoc on America's former economic independence. Were people to take a long, hard look at the things over the past thirty years that have reduced this nation to paper tiger "status" and massive dependence on other countries for its food and fiber, its energy sources and now even its "tech support" and call centers -- they might rethink their view of such legislation.

Is canned salmon still available on the shelves of your local grocery store for a reasonable price?

Those in charge of "policy" are only too happy to make a far larger profit on their investment in distant lands where "human resources," like natural resources, are shamelessly exploited without the checks and balances and better working conditions and benefits once enjoyed in America. The thought of a "middle" class of people that actually dare to believe they should own property and know life without abject poverty, is apparently abhorrent to those who are busy collateralizing our every resource in order to skim the power and make our middle, property-owning class go extinct. Since the last quarter of the eighteenth century, America has been the place people could go to become free, own property and be independent. Should our steps forward be negated without a whimper as the Albert Gores of the world seek to make us -- but never themselves -- little more than serfs and peasants in service to their masters?

I ask people to unpack and stop taking those wholesale guilt trips they've been conditioned to take at the drop of a hat. Consider that what's actually happening is the undermining of our economic health and independence, while food and fiber is produced in countries with far less stringent growing conditions and regulations than ours. Would Americans ever knowingly produce pet or human food "salted" with deadly melamine? Why shouldn't we raise our own food, grow our own trees -- to be harvested, because they are, after all, a renewable resource -- and utilize our own manpower once again? We owe it to future generations to unpack!

Julie Kay Smithson is a property rights researcher in rural west-central Ohio propertyrights@earthlink.net Permission is given to post and/or share if left intact. Please visit http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org a place to learn about your property rights and how to protect them.