For several years now, we have tried to convince our audience that it is not possible to win our freedom and property rights battles within the confines of the law, through the legislative or judicial branches of government. The deck is stacked against us. And certainly we will win nothing by approaching the executive branch.  Even our right of initiative is under attack by the legislative branch and the courts.

Alexander Tyler wrote in 1787: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

There are five forms of redress of grievances by the “people” to government. 1) Petition the legislative branch of government; 2) Bring court actions to defend and uphold our individual constitutional rights; 3) Engage in massive protests at the foot of government’s door; 4) Civil disobedience and defiance of unconstitutional law and finally 5) Armed revolution.

If the first two forms of redress have been “closed” to the people, (and they have) there are only three forms of redress remaining. The third and fourth forms require a huge outpouring from aggrieved and angry Americans. Protests and civil disobedience must be in the thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands. And to be effective, any protests must be brought to the individual legislators and justices at the foot of “their” doors, not at the capitol building, or at the halls of justice. Decision-makers must be made to feel the pain of their decisions at “their” personal door. They must suffer, as we are, for confiscating our rights and our property. They must pay a price for violating their oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. And their families should also pay a price for being complicit with the decision makers. Perhaps the wives and children of the decision makers, under pressure from protesters, can convince them to behave as not only representatives of, by and for the “people”, but guardians of our Constitutions. But if the people do not organize and rise exponentially in numbers, we have no chance of winning.

With regard to civil disobedience and outright defiance of unconstitutional law (redress No. 4), John Locke wrote: “Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.”

Unfortunately, recent decisions by legislators and the courts only embolden government and the lobbyists, to continue their actions. Only WE THE PEOPLE can stop them, but will we? If the right of protest and civil disobedience, the third and fourth forms of redress of grievances, produce no results, there is only one form of redress remaining and it is the hardest and harshest of all the five forms. But civil disobedience and defiance of unconstitutional law must be done on a large scale or the government will make terrorized victims out of the few that try. We intend to fight tyranny, but obviously we can’t do it alone. And we don’t intend to become a “victim”.

But are these two actions our only recourse? Our system of government does have some positive attributes. We can petition the legislature and we can address some of our grievances in the courts. We can also use the “court” of public opinion. Yes, the system is corrupt, yes, almost all politicians are more worried about getting elected than doing what is right for this country under our constitutions, yes the judges are now legislating from the bench, but if the right buttons are pushed, with the right people, on a large enough scale, we can win some battles. But to win those battles it takes four (4) key elements; powerful, energetic leaders who can catalyze people into action, a fool-proof method to raise a continuing source of sufficient funds to hire the professionals necessary to press our cases in court and lobby federal, state and local legislatures, a large enough group of people who are willing to stand up and be counted for all the right reasons and finally a means of wide-ranging communications.

Rural landowners are fighting an entrenched group of environmentalists and conservationists that have infiltrated every level of our government. Numbering over 4,000 groups, they are wealthy, powerful and politically influential. Back in 1969 the Federal Government passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA became the “foot in the door” for federal, state and local governments to implement aggressive environmental and conservationist protections and policies without regard to constitutional safeguards to property rights. Environmentalism and conservationism of which NEPA and subsequent environmental acts are a part, run hand-in-hand with world-wide socialism and are the product of the United Nations, which the United States has now bought hook, line and sinker. All of these laws and policies have become institutionalized. They are taught in our grade schools, clear on up to our liberal colleges that dump out brainwashed “kids” onto the streets to be absorbed by business and government, all the while “spitting” out the venom they were taught in schools that humans are a stain on the Earth and need to be relegated to high-dense urban areas. Rural lands are for birds, animals, plants and trees, not for people. This skewed mindset has been deeply embedded in the Nation’s psyche.

The hard, cold truth is, you can’t unravel this mindset with a bunch of fractured and scattered grass-roots groups, with little or no money. To offset that money and political power we have to become equally powerful. The way to become equally powerful is to employ the same methods of our enemies. That takes money. First we need to educate city dwellers and rural landowners as to what has transpired over the last 40 years of extreme environmentalism and explain to them in powerful, easily understood terms why this enemy must be defeated. We then need to get them to contribute to this cause of freedom and stop contributing to environmental groups. But finally, we need to use the vast wealth of America’s private land to fill our coffers with the money we will need to hire the professionals to lobby the politicians to beat the environmentalists at their own game. We have designed an ingenious plan that uses the voices, power, strength and the immense financial base of the vast number of lands and landowners we are working to protect.

© Copyright February 2007 - All Rights Reserved

~ The Author ~
Ron Ewart is the President of The National Association of Rural Landowners and nationally recognized author on freedom and property rights issues. Ron may reached for comment via email at r.ewart@comcast.net.

In addition, Ron can usually be heard each Tuesday evening from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. (ET) on Perspectives on America on The Micro Effect broadcasting network, as either Jeffrey Bennett’s guest or Guest Host. Tune in – you’ll be glad you did.

Perspectives on America can be heard from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m. (ET) Monday through Friday on The Micro Effect.