Hang on! This is a survey of power and land grabs throughout history. It’s brutal and may not make sense at first. In the end, it’s a disappointing fantasy—but some suggestions to snap idealistic “war for land” back into reality are possible. Although you may not want a lecture, when you finish reading, you’ll see how history fits as tight as Hanging Judge Isaac Parker’s noose.

Since Adam and Eve, wars seem to have been part of history. From the earliest battles in ancient Mesopotamia to today’s wars in the Middle East, conflicts over land have continually shaped our world. Most wars have been about taking land and tribute from conquered subjects. They were fought for waterways, food production, mines, metals, oil, slaves, and land grabs for the powerful—and usually paid for by the losers.

Some land grabs were indirect, even covert, via taxes. The highest tax recorded in antiquity was Pharaoh’s law that Israeli slaves pay 20% of their produce as a government tax (Genesis 47:26). With that 20%, the rulers eventually created total control of food—and of all the land, commerce, and people of Egypt.

Alexander the Great lived more than 2,000 years ago. By age 30, he had amassed one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. Widely considered one of world’s most successful military commanders, he was undefeated in his battles for land and tribute.

The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase imperium sine fine (“empire without end”) signaled that neither time nor space limited the Empire’s expansion. The basis of Rome’s strength, like Alexander’s, was land capture and tribute.

Taxation under Rome’s Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product, typically about 2-5% for individuals. The Bible records that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to be taxed (Luke 2:1-5). While single-digit rates like these seem small today, at that time 2-5% was harsh. It provided the Roman government prosperity and financial resources to expand the Empire.

What was the key to Roman strength? Trade and infrastructure based on land capture and tribute.

Roman provinces traded among themselves but also outside their frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Sea power and Roman roads made trade possible. The hard-surfaced roads themselves are considered the most advanced ever built before the early 19^th century. They facilitated military policing, communications, and trade, and were resistant to floods and other environmental hazards. Some remained usable for over a thousand years.

Internally, Rome developed aqueducts as well as permanent roads, generating more value for increased commerce than any of the other Ancients.

The Empire’s expansion and endurance created a culture with a lasting influence on Western language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government. All of these powerful influences can be traced to Roman conquest, land acquisition, and tribute.

In modern times, land that falls into government hands becomes either a valuable asset or a management nightmare. Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the USA, believed that private ownership and management of land is more productive than government control. He understood that the Federal government couldn’t possibly manage the whole western USA. Private property was the answer—land surveyed, titled, used, improved, maintained, and loved by non-government owners.

At the peak of the American Civil War, Lincoln developed a strategy to increase the US’s citizen-owned land. He signed the 1862 Homestead Act into law. It was intended to open western lands to settlers on what the government considered to be “idle” tracts of land captured from Native Americans or purchased like Alaska and the Louisiana Purchase. Pioneer homesteaders were required to improve the land and produce goods, food, or a service. If they lived on their 160-acre homesteads for seven years, the land was theirs at no cost.

Even when land was not the motive, war has an uninterrupted history of devastating civilization. Combat and battle have become more sophisticated over time, but war’s effect on human beings has stayed the same: global tragedy and atrocity. Notably, the 20^th-century Holocaust alone resulted in over 11 million people murdered, including 6 million Jews. Between 22 and 26 million men died in battle during World War II. In that war’s final act, between 70,000 and 80,000 Japanese were killed when the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Horrifying facts, but that war did protect the American homeland and the homelands of others in Europe and Asia.

We have just hopped over 3,000 years of war, land, and taxes and come to our own times. Hang on for some modern accumulations of land—some beneficial and others that are covert and destructive.

Currently in the USA, the largest landowner is Red Emmerson and his family. Their Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) manages 2.33 million acres, mostly West Coast timberland in California, Oregon, and Washington. Their forest-products company is among the largest US producers of lumber, millwork, windows, and renewable energy. SPI’s business model prioritizes quality wood products, rural job opportunities, wildfire-resilient forests, wildlife habitat, and recreational spaces. The Sierra Pacific Foundation has provided more than $6 million in scholarships to children of SPI crew members, including most recently $521,000 in 2023 alone. Its management plan is creative, ecologically sound, sustainable—and profitable—at no cost to taxpayers. In every way, SPI fulfills President Lincoln’s vision of productive private ownership of land.

Other large private holdings include the King Ranch at Kingsville, Texas. Although many history buffs think that it is the largest ranch in the US, it isn’t. It contains “only” 911,215 privately owned acres. Still, it is a national leader in farming, oil production, and livestock.

Ted Turner has bounced for the last dozen years between first and sixth of the large ranch land owners. He manages 2,000,000 acres of grasslands, much of it scenic, in Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, and South Dakota. At one time, he said his goal was to own a continuous chain of private property from Mexico to Canada. Turner properties are renowned for spotless management of land, water, and environment.

Bill Gates ranks No. 41 in the US with 275,000 acres, but he isn’t into cattle and ranching. He likes fertile land that grows food and is profitable. In fact, his appraised land assets may exceed many or all those who own more acres.

Those are some modern “good guys” in white Stetsons. Here come some bad guys in black hats.

Enter President Joe Biden, apparently determined to outdo Emmerson, Turner, Malone, Reed, Bezos, Gates, and the King Ranch. On January 4, 2024, in Coconino County, Arizona, he proudly announced that his administration had wrested a whopping 24,000,000 acres from private enterprise for the Federal government—a new record for land takeovers, paid for with public tax dollars, and now eliminated from private management and production.

Why this enormous acquisition? Ostensible reasons include “preservation,” “conservation,” “protection,” and so on. To encourage citizens to believe that these and other millions of acres are still theirs, the government often renames formerly private property as “public” land.

The question bounces back, however: “Who is all this land being protected from?”

Currently, the US government owns 664,000,000 acres—almost 30% of the nation’s total continental land mass of 2,271,343,000 acres. Beyond North American borders, Federal property also includes land in 193 countries for military bases, medical research facilities, and embassies. To put the numbers into context, the Federal government, US States, foreign properties, and easements total more than the entire acreage of the Roman Empire, give or take a few coliseums. Most Americans don’t realize that our government’s undeclared war for land is a covert, out-of-control monster.

How did the federales remove so much land from private tax rolls? Well, they funded it with public tax dollars. The takeover is orchestrated not by Congressional legislation but by executive orders from the Oval Office and rulings from the administrative bureaucracy—without a vote of the citizens or their representatives. The unstated process of this unacknowledged land grab typically bypasses public scrutiny. Agencies in the Executive branch in Washington, D.C., issue rulings, levy fees and fines, collect “tribute,” then buy private property and remove it from production. That bureaucratic removal is a political conquest that marks the end of private management. The process has historically happened in war but continues today under political cover.

As recently as January 2024, President Biden also announced that he was expanding the Green movement in Alaska by closing 10,600,000 acres to oil and gas leasing. The federales already own 95.8% of Alaska, leaving only 4.2% of a resource-rich state for private enterprise to manage and harvest. This administrative action now “protects” the nation’s western Arctic area from the alleged detriment of oil and gas exploration. Where is Alexander the Great when someone needs to step up and make a solid business decision?

That’s not the only conquest of private property orchestrated from D.C. On his inauguration day, Biden mentioned his 30×30 Plan—a strategy (or plot or scheme) to transfer 30% of US land from private ownership to the government by the year 2030. He later released his 50×50 Plan for the government to transform 50% of the US to “public lands” by 2050.

In an Epoch Times interview, Aurelia Skipwith (President Trump’s Secretary of Fish and Wildlife) said, “No one knows how much land the Federal government thinks is enough.” Margaret Byfield (Executive Director of American Stewards of Liberty) said, “This is their end game. The reason for the 30×30 land grab. The purpose for the climate crisis hysteria. We will own nothing. [The US government] will own everything.”

The Federal government, not including State lands, now owns 87.8% of Nevada, 75.2% of Utah, 70.4% of Idaho, 60.4% of Oregon, and more. As noted above, it already owns nearly 30% of continental US land, so it has almost achieved the full 30×30 goal of Federal ownership. As the 50×50 proposal clearly shows, more acquisitions of private land are being planned for the “public good.”

Hang on to the buggy for the ride. Don’t jump now. You may not be concerned with yesterday’s land-grabs by Attila the Hun, or perhaps today’s by Vladimir Putin in Crimea and Ukraine, or maybe not even current marginal US lands a thousand miles away.

But what about tomorrow, on your own doorstep? What if a property is right across the road from your home? What if rumors are circulating that the Feds want to confiscate it through eminent domain? What if some State or Federal agency claims it is fallow ground better used for conservation or wetlands or biodiversity or “the greater good”? You could become the victim of peacetime “tribute.”

Such is the case of Kirkwood Township in Ohio’s Belmont County. Only 4.2% of Ohio is owned by the Federal government, yet the State itself owns 698,597 acres. Here’s the hidden hitch: governments at all levels work together in a fungible relationship. Historically, they have traded land among themselves to fund bridges, city water development, etc. Never have these fungible transactions been determined by a vote of the citizens—never! So we must ask, “Are the Federal and Ohio governments working together on Biden’s 50×50 scheme in Belmont County?”

In Kirkwood Township, a citizens committee has identified the effects of Big Brother as a neighbor. They aren’t good. Under the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), the State of Ohio has acquired up to 28,000 acres in Belmont County for the Egypt Valley Wildlife Refuge (EVWR). It’s working to confiscate more. This land is a small fraction of the 698,597 acres that Ohio already owns, but the committee has discovered that the State’s piece-by-piece “conquest” is devastating the local economy. An undeclared war on private land has made Kirkwood Township the poorest in Belmont County and one of the poorest municipalities in Ohio.

Why this dereliction? Broken promises are the reason that the Egypt Valley Wildlife Refuge has degenerated from its idealistic origins to its present wretched condition. Over two dozen years ago, the ODNR rationalized its takeover of 28,000-acres. It promised to help the local economy by developing tourism through lakes, pavilions, trails, hunting, fishing, etc. To date, however, the 100-acre lake has not materialized—nor have any of the other improvements. As with so much government fallow land, the EVWR is now an impenetrable jungle spotted with litter and heaps of trash.

Why the unfulfilled promises? This public land is suffering from a lack of routine, responsible management.

State-controlled land owners and managers have collected the following facts and numbers from local citizens:

1. ODNR pays zero taxes. The tax loss from the EVWR is estimated at $8,932,000 during ODNR control. This lost revenue could have gone to roads, schools, law enforcement, and public services.
2. No timber has been select cut. It could have been responsibly, sustainably cut every 18 years. 28,000 acres x $2,000/acre x 2 cuts = $96,000,000 of lost income.
3. No agriculture or hunting leases have been issued. 28,000 acres x $30/acre x 28 years = $24,360,000 forfeited—not a cent received by local governments.
4. No oil and gas signing leases. $5,000/acre = $140,000,000 unrealized.
5. No oil and gas royalties. 18-20% annually for 35 years. Incalculable losses.
6. No surface liquidation. $2,000/acre x 28,000 acres = $56,000,000 potential income.
7. Undeterminble loss of private enterprise production of food, products, and services.

Here’s one perspective on these facts: more dollars have been lost from the Kirkwood tax base than Al Capone’s lifetime acquisitions in the City of Chicago.

To repeat, due to negligent and non-existent government management, none of the above has been accomplished in Belmont County, Ohio. This pathetic record is typical of most Federal lands. The government simply does not exercise the care and concern of private enterprise. It contrasts even with Hitler, Caesar, Lincoln, and Zelensky. Irrespective of their methods and morality, they knew how to profit from land ownership. They fought for land and its long-term value to their nations—their citizens.

Good for you—you have read to the end. Here are my suggestions to end these modern land wars in the US:

1. Start an orderly liquidation of all government properties and apply the proceeds directly to the national debt.
2. Commission local, savvy real estate people to manage sales and liquidation—not desk-bound government bureaucrats in far-away offices.
3. Restore funds confiscated from local citizens to local entities before government debts are paid.
4. Be aware. Stay alert. Keep in touch with elected and appointed government representatives. Constantly demand no new land purchases, because governments don’t understand how to manage land intelligently, profitably, or efficiently.

There you go. That fixes it. No more land grabs. No more land wars.

Footnote: you can research the land problem by Googling names and events in this article. Here are a few resources for starters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts—President Lincoln’s initiatives

https://landreport.com/top-100-landowners—current American landowners

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Milei—for rescuing Argentina’s economy

https://www.weforum.org/press/2022/01/klaus-schwab-releases-the-great-narrative-as-sequel-to-the-great-reset/–for the World Economic Forum’s vision of a government-controlled future

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/bidens_30_x_30_land_grab.html

Biden’s 30 x 30 Land Grab

By Janet Levy

Our Founding Fathers recognized private property rights and understood they were a chief basis of prosperity and freedom. 

But of late, the administrative state has been usurping vast amounts of land and has overstepped its authority. 

State and local governments -– and, needless to say, citizens and businesses -– have no part in the decision-making.  Your land could any time cease to be yours at the federal government’s will.

This extensive land-grab in America is part of the global ‘Half Earth’ agenda, initiated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) at the Earth Summit 2012 in Rio de Janeiro.  One of its aims: the setting aside of 50% of the world’s land and water for conservation by 2050.  In 2021, it suggested that “at least 30% and up to 70% or more” should be protected.

President Biden signaled commitment to this preposterous agenda within days of taking office: his Executive Order 14008, a.k.a. ‘America the Beautiful’ or 30 x 30, is a blatant departure from constitutional principles of private property and hopes to place 30% of land and water in the U.S. under permanent protection by 2030.  In tandem, the Department of Interior issued secretarial order (SO) 3396, rescinding the Trump administration’s SO 3388 and removing state and local veto power over federal land acquisitions.

Under the pretext of reversing “human caused climate change,” the program works in the sinister shadow of George Soros and his cabal of billionaire elite.  By controlling land, water, and food through ownership by pliant governments, they will eventually control people.  That is the real purpose. 

It cannot be saving the planet, for the numbers do not add up.  Against a purported loss of 11 million acres per decade, another 680 million acres of land is to be placed under so-called protection, when already, 270 million acres – about 25 times the decadal loss – is “permanently protected.”  What is this if not a colossal land-grab?

The reasoning that the government is better at conservation than landowners does not hold either.  According to a congressional report, four federal agencies -– the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Forest Service -– had a combined maintenance backlog of $19.38 billion in 2018.  Imagine exposing another 680 million acres to government inefficiency. 

Private owners, on the other hand, are the best caretakers of land, producing at the same time the food, energy, and minerals our nation requires.  Their livelihood, after all, depends on the integrity of their land holdings.  This is the research-based argument made by the American Stewards of Liberty, a non-profit dedicated to protecting “private property rights and the liberties they secure.” It maintains there is no scientific data to suggest that “preserving” land will “cure” climate change; also, that 36% of U.S. land is already owned or protected by federal and state governments.

Meanwhile, the big, federal land-grab continues apace, a favored instrument being the Antiquities Act of 1906.  However, these depredations are not going unchallenged.  Some recent instances, and the lawsuits challenging them, are listed below:

• Last summer, Biden designated a new monument, the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.  Located near the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, it is spread over 1,562 square miles.  That’s nearly 1 million acres, though the Antiquities Act specifies that such designations be confined to the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
  • Shortly after, two Republican Arizona representatives – Warren Petersen and Ben Toma – filed a lawsuit that Biden had exceeded his presidential authority in declaring the land protected.  State officials say Biden is appeasing radical environmentalists, and that curtailing mining, ranching, and activities vital for food and energy production would have far-reaching national security repercussions.
  • Chris Heaton, a rancher who runs a 50,000 acre ranch on public and private land, is also suing Biden and the federal government, since he is losing the grasslands and creek where his cattle graze and water.  He now faces criminal penalties for an activity his family has been engaged in for six generations.  He is being represented pro bono by the Pacific Legal Foundation.
• In October 2021, Biden ordered two national monuments – Bear Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante – in Utah to be expanded to a combined 3.2 million acres.  This curtails decades-long ranching and recreational activity in the area.
  • An initial lawsuit demanding a shrinking of the monuments to their original area was dismissed, but Utah Governor Spencer Cox and state and county officials have taken it to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.  They believe the president has exceeded his authority, and that the acreage is too vast for proper management.  Already, the federal government owns 63% of the land in Utah.
  • Meanwhile, Utah has passed the Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act, allowing it to overrule some federal directives.
• In September 2016, President Obama declared 5,000 square miles – that is, 3.2 million acres, and roughly the size of Connecticut – of the Georges Bank area of the Atlantic Ocean a national monument, ignoring the “smallest area” caveat and robbing New England fishing communities of their livelihood.
  • In 2017, a lawsuit was filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.  The case was appealed and a writ of certiorari was sought from the Supreme Court in 2020.  But the high court in 2021 declined to hear the case.

In general, courts have been deferential to the executive branch’s efforts to withdraw land and natural resources from private use.  However, in the lobstermen’s association case, Chief Justice John Roberts made the critical observation that the Antiquities Act failed to “pose any meaningful restraint” on presidents, allowing them limitless power to “set aside vast and amorphous expanses of terrain above and below sea level.”

On close scrutiny, it is apparent that this movement away from the constitutional principles of private property towards control of land and natural resources by the administrative state is part of a global plan to achieve total control over people.

The attempt to extinguish individual freedom in the name of saving the planet began at the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the first Earth Summit.  Member states signed a supposedly non-binding Agenda 21 to promote sustainable development goals (SDGs).  This was the thin edge of the wedge, handing over decision making to experts and technocrats controlled by a powerful global elite.

Agenda 21 grew into Agenda 2030, including 17 SDGs. The driving force behind Agenda 2030 was the IUCN, which called for the ‘Half Earth’ agenda through Motion 101, with its devious call for protecting “30% by 2030,” and “70% or more” ultimately.  The IUCN Congress, comprising 1,400 governmental and NGO groups from 170 countries, meets every four years to set the global conservation agenda.  Leaders from government, academia, and business attend the congress; the influence of the global elite over them through funding is only now becoming evident.

An example from the U.S. will indicate how the web of influence works.  In 2019, the Center for American Program (CAP), published a report titled How Much Nature Should America Keep.  The CAP is a think tank backed by Soros.  It has links to the Democratic Party, and helped the Obama administration formulate many policies.

Shortly after the CAP report, two members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) -– Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM) -– introduced resolutions (S.R. 372 and H.R. 835) in the Senate and the House to push the 30% by 2030 goal.  The caucus has ties to the Communist Party USA.  In 2020, Biden made Ms. Haaland Secretary of the Interior.

Liberals and progressives, communists, Soros, the World Economic Forum -– it’s the elite network at work, once again. Its influence must be reversed.

Image: Eminent domain by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free