Freedom Part 2 "Our Public Lands"

Public lands – i.e. BLM land, national forests, national parks and wilderness areas or lands owned by the public. public lands definition

What do public lands mean to me, and to us, as a country? Our public lands are one of the things that guarantees our freedom. Without publicly owned lands and the right to use then whenever we choose, we become just a bunch of peasants because only the richest people are able to use and benefit from the land.

Think back to the times of feudal systems when only rich lords owned the lands. The peasants owned no land and had to pay rent (usually in the form of crops or a skilled trade) to the lords for use of the land. The peasants could take nothing from the land, like lumber or game, without permission from, or paying a tax to, the lord. Kept perpetually poor and working for the lord, the peasants were never able to enjoy the land they worked so hard on. While, the lords and aristocrats could roam the land freely, taking what they wanted and traveling where they wanted.

With the quickly rising cost and development of precious open space and the increasing fees on our public land that is happening in the west these days, land is quickly becoming the play ground for the rich again. How are poor college students, middle class families on a budget or poor urban families going to afford to visit and use their public land? The answer is they can’t.

Public land is land held in trust by the federal government for American citizens. Therefore, everyone who is a citizen owns public land. During most of our lives as citizens we pay taxes and vote. Through our taxes we own and fund the government. So if the government, that we elect and pay for, then tells use we need to pay an additional fee to use our lands, a fee that many Americans cannot afford, this government begins to look like the feudal systems of the past. It’s like paying your mortgage and the government then slapping a charge on you every time you want to enter your own house. Or, worse yet, the government telling you when you get to come and go from your own property.

When these families or college kids are denied access to land, they paid for, because of financial reasons, they are no longer owners of this land. They become peasants. Their rights and their freedoms have become compromised. Without access to our publicly owned lands we lose our freedom.

And all Americans are buying and paying for the natural resources extracted from our publicly owned lands. Buying because we put gas in our cars and build houses with wood. Paying because our tax money goes into building and maintaining the forest roads used to extract these resources. It doesn’t seem right that we pay twice for the same resource but this is a topic for another essay.

Since we are already paying twice for the right to own and travel our land how can the government justify making us pay a third time?

Without the option of being able to drop everything for a day or more and get away – whether it’s hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, or just a sight seeing rumble down a forest service road – we are forever caught up in the whirlwind of daily life which, unfortunately, revolves around the centripetal capitalist machine.

I don’t have too many beefs with capitalism, just with the way it’s used by some companies and individuals. Capitalism affords me a pretty decent lifestyle. I’m always working to pay bills, buy toys or take trips. But without an opportunity to break out of our everyday consumer based lives for a moment we loose a huge opportunity to gain perspective on our motivations. Without perspective we loose the ability make good choices. Not having land to exercise a lifestyle of freedom and reflection keeps us from being true Americans because with out access to our publicly owned lands we loose the freedom we Americans are so proud of. Without freedom the whole capitalist system is a mute point.

When we cannot use OUR public lands the capitalist system has then become just another form of slavery because all we are doing is working to pay taxes or pay for goods and services. If we are not allowed to travel our publicly owned lands then we no longer own them; we are no longer free. This sounds just like the feudal systems our ancestors died to overthrow.