The Federal Control of American Land

Dekulakization of America – The Process of Elimination  
Diane Alden 

When communism began its inexorable march through Russia and Eastern 
Europe, the first areas brought under communist control were the 
rural areas. The process began for the Russian peasant, or "kulak," 
with the extermination of the kulaks as a class. The kulaks who 
resisted collectivization were shot. 

Others were deported with their families, and many hundreds of 
thousands were forced to labor in the wilderness areas of Siberia. 
Many tens of thousands perished there in the vast wasteland of 
Siberia. 

In the grain belt of the Ukraine the peasants and farmers resisted 
collectivization and 6 million died of starvation in a period of a 
few months in the early 1930s.

American power elites don't shoot our kulaks; they just run them out 
of business with laws they pass. Laws meant to do one thing end up 
having an altogether contradictory effect from the original intention 
of the bills passed by Congress.

As the 1,400 farmers of the Klamath basin discovered recently, their 
fathers and grandfathers had signed onto one system through the 
Reclamation Act only to be run out of town by the Endangered Species 
Act. 

With all the good intentions in the world Congress passes one law 
until a powerful group or groups come along with another law – never 
mind that they are incompatible. Money and loud minorities and 
ignorant majorities trump the right thing to do.

In the 1960s and 70s the "new age" of environmentalism began to have 
immense impact on land issues and private property rights. Laws meant 
to "save" one thing were being used to destroy something else. As a 
militancy took over the green movement, common sense and compromise 
got lost in their moral high ground posturing, half-truths and lies, 
and the end game eventually justified the unconscionable means. 

Add that to the billion-dollar business environmentalism became over 
the years, plus the religious overtones its extreme edges took on, 
and the mix is a recipe for unconstitutional laws and folly. The once 
well-intentioned environmental movement became one more elite power 
grouping bent on destruction of those who stand in its way.

Fateful Year of 1979

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter co-opted 100 million acres of Alaska 
under the Antiquities Act, thereby putting that much land of the 
sovereign state of Alaska out of any kind of use but for the elite 
and their pursuits. That land is then off the tax rolls and the 
citizens of the state are then floundering to regroup and find a way 
to pay for state expenses.

Thirteen years later comes Bill Clinton, and the same thing happens, 
nearly 100 million more acres put off-limits to all but the most 
elite pursuits. Alaska became one of the meccas for the new religion 
of environmentalism. It was a great destination for those who could 
afford hunting trips or cruises to one of the prettiest places on 
earth. 

Over the years the same thing has happened throughout the 
intermountain West as the area became as valuable for scenery as for 
cattle, logging, mining and rural and small town living. 

In effect, the entire area became a big park or high-priced 
development and a playground for the rich. But its most important 
function was as a sort of mecca to the religion of the greens – 
radical environmentalism.

One has to ask, do all these land grabs do anything for the 
endangered species or for the saving of land or the environment? Not 
according to the National Center for Policy Analysis, which in 1997 
said;:

"For all of its power, the ESA has not worked well. Of the 1,524 
species listed as either endangered or threatened during the ESA's 
more than 20 years of existence, only 27 had been delisted by the end 
of 1995. Seven of the 27 had become extinct, eight others had been 
wrongly listed and the remaining 12 recovered with no help from the 
ESA. In fact, no species recovery can be definitively traced to the 
ESA."

Meanwhile, logging in the Northwest has decreased 89 percent since 
1990 and entire communities have been destroyed to save an owl that 
was not endangered. Too bad Congress, with its pathetic attempts at 
oversight, didn't see that the report on which the ESA listing was 
based was a grad student's observations out in the woods. 

Using that logic, I can attest that the robins are endangered because 
I have not seen many in my backyard this year. Congressional 
oversight on these issues is a joke.

The 1990s

The mean green machine rolls pitilessly over a class of people – 
America's kulaks. The next target after the loggers became the 
federal lands rancher and those dependent on the old Bureau of 
Reclamation water laws in the arid sections of the West. 

Between the greens and the government, dozens of counties in the 
intermountain West are now virtually bereft of meaningful employment 
for the rural poor, i.e., the natural resource producer – the miner, 
the rancher, the logger.

That includes the small rancher who depends on his inholding in 
public lands to maintain some kind of bare existence. Contrary to 
what the greens say, most ranchers have fewer than 500 head and they 
are not the Texas variety.

Texas is lucky. It has next to no public or federal lands. Its cattle 
industry does quite well in comparison. But Texas cowboys are not all 
that much interested in the woes of cowpokes in Idaho, Montana or the 
intermoutain states. 

Texas family logging entities have learned, however, that even George 
Bush's "Don't mess with Texas" means little to Congress or the 
greens. Texas logging is running into its problems now, too, under 
the ESA and other regulations.

The tactic used by the greens and feds is to divide and conquer. 
Happens all the time as rancher is pitted against rancher, rancher 
against farmer, rancher against logger, state against state, state 
against federales. 

These groups pay attention to vague promises that the mighty green 
machine and the feds make – promises like special privileges and more 
money for pet projects or causes. The promises, as they eventually 
learn, mean nothing.

It isn't enough that the federal government now owns or controls most 
of Alaska. It also controls or owns most of the intermountain West. 
Do you realize that 89 percent of the state of Nevada, 66 percent of 
Idaho, 45 percent to 55 percent of California, Oregon, Washington, 
Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado are under federal 
control? 

In all, approximately 42 percent of the United States is under 
centrally planned and federal control.

Do you also understand that we live on 5 percent or less of the land 
mass of the United States? That is a fact, but the greens and the 
feds will not be satisfied until they have run rural America off of 
what is left.

A backlash against the extremes of environmentalism and government 
bullying and central planning began out West in the late '70s. It was 
called the Sagebrush Rebellion. It took place in the arid Western 
states like Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.

Like the stories of the Old West, this rebellion was about cowboys 
against the land grabbers, only this time the grabbers were America's 
elite: big business, big foundations, big government and big special-
interest green groups. All combined to destroy what was best in rural 
America. 

Joined by the county commissioners of Western States and private-
property rights groups throughout the United States, the backlash 
grew in scope as rural America and private property activists decided 
that the coalition of power elite against the rural areas had gone 
too far.

The real fight began as the historical trend toward centralization 
and deprivatizing of the land areas of the United States included 
international interests as well. This trend toward centralization and 
loss of sovereignty is aided and abetted by such international 
efforts as United Nations Agenda 21, the Wildlands Project, Heritage 
Rivers, and a thousand and one efforts in state and local and 
national areas to put off-limits to human use most of the land mass 
of the United States. 

In fact, the Wildlands Project will have funding because of CARA, the 
Conservation and Reinvestment Act. Logging and mining and ranching 
are disappearing. Rural communities are beginning to disappear from 
the landscape. Certain recreational uses like hunting WILL be next.

A Happy Ending (See end of Part 1, Green Manifest Destiny and 'The 
Wind Dancers.')

My male hero in "The Wind Dancers" is a rancher named Sam Crowder. 
These are the words he speaks in Chapter One, words I heard a 
thousand times as I traveled out West: 

Weariness drifted over Sam's face and into his voice. He allowed a 
feeling to surface. It had come and he hadn't stopped it. He had 
become accustomed to not caring, wrapping himself in a periodic swath 
of numbness that protected him from pain or joy.
"So what would you suggest? Do we form a posse, saddle up, lock and 
load, but who is it exactly we are we going after? Put a name on the 
face – whose face do we stick on this bad guy?"

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked toward the windows, 
which rattled ominously as dust hit them with sharp teeth, pitting 
the surface and tearing away at the paint.

"Maybe it's the future – it will happen no matter what we do. What do 
you think, huh? Can you picture horses to rent for a day, trail rides 
behind fifty other folks. Live in town in pre-fab government housing, 
sell souvenirs to the tourists, let them take our picture and say how 
quaint we are and ain't our kids adorable. Whatcha think Mike? Has 
happened before, don't ya know." 

He stared out the window at the clouds racing toward the Rockies 70 
miles to the west. He blocked out the thought that he might lose 
something else important to him – his way of life. He had already 
lost the best part when Kathy died, and it took real concentrated 
effort to be concerned now. 

"You know, Mike, we truly are a self-destructive bunch. Don't want 
anyone telling us what to do; government, the packers, enviros, piss 
ant developers, nobody. But first we got to figure out what it is we 
should be doing – what do all these people want. And how the hell did 
we get to be the bad guys?" Sam paused as if he were finished with a 
tumble of words, more than he had spoken in days. 

"I'll be damned if I know. It seems like we're the Indians now – 
hostiles – that thing without a face is going to make sure we have 
our Sand Creek, Marias River or Wounded Knee. Maybe we deserve it. I 
just wish it hadn't happened in my lifetime." 

Mike nervously wiped crumbs from the table and said 
thoughtfully, "What the feds don't already own, folks with a whole 
lot of money and time will take the rest of it at sky high prices. 
Taxes go up and we are shit out of luck – but they got their own 
personal kingdom on earth and to hell with everybody else. People 
with a direct hookup to God, it seems – they're gonna make sure guys 
like John Decker can kiss it all goodbye." 

Sam shrugged. "They're doing what others have been doing for over 200 
years – getting their piece. They'll come and they'll go. It's the 
other ones who scare me. The ones that want to turn it all into park –
 where no one owns it. So that way, government can give raping rights 
to anyone with a little clout or leave it for a few with thousand-
dollar cameras and designer hiking boots. That scares the hell out of 
me – the petty little gods who'll save a gnat or won't keep a fish 
they catch – but they don't give a damn about a way of life – a good 
way." 

The NRA and CARA 
Last weekend the NRA had an internal struggle over support of CARA. 
Officially the group came out for CARA, but many on the board 
demanded changes in that support to caveats. 

I am not sure, however, whether the NRA support of CARA matters, as 
the trend is to roll over people and the land in a new kind of 
manifest destiny. Nonetheless, the people who live on the land and 
care for it better than the government will go the way of the 
American Indian and small-town America.

In effect the greens, the feds, the foundations, the insiders, the 
beltway bunch, the country club Republicans, the leftist Cynthia 
McKinneys and Maxine Waterses are unconcerned that real people in the 
U.S. suffer. They have other fish and special interests to fry as 
lives are torn asunder by a kind of blind selfishness, a Luddite 
approach to the environment, and a complex of groups and people who 
look the other way as their fellow Americans are destroyed.

As my character Sam says: 

"They're doing what others have been doing for over 200 years – 
getting their piece ... the petty little gods who'll save a gnat or 
won't keep a fish they catch – but they don't give a damn about a way 
of life – a good way."

Sam started to rise, then leaned forward against the table. "But I 
guess our way of life doesn't matter to them any more than the 
Indians' way did a hundred years ago. Sort of ironic, don't you 
think? Maybe the Indians will get it back yet – better them than the 
feds or the Perrier crowd." 

I was hoping that the people on the board of the NRA could have 
given "The Wind Dancers" a possibility of a happy ending. I was 
hoping that my government would do the right thing by these people of 
rural America besides bribing some with subsidies and paying people 
not to grow food. I was hoping George Bush would do the right thing 
by the Klamath farmers.

The ending will have wait, I suppose. I still hope that America 
finally understands that it is under assault from special interests 
within in addition to a terror without. I just hope we have courage 
and perseverance to address both.

To find out more about CARA, "The Wind Dancers," life in general and 
then some, visit my website at www.aldenchronicles.com. Contact me at 
wulfric8@bellsouth.net.