Submission by Kathleen Marquardt, American Policy Center

 

The tool of the government to steal America from the people.

What we are seeing all over the country is governments—national, state, and even local—using Native American reservations as tools to destroy not only property rights, but also to shut down dams and render properties useless. All of this so government leaders can take the land back once functioning communities are no longer there. (And yes, they are using many other tools, but for several more articles, I want to focus on how our federal government first began the demolition of property rights by pretending to assist tribes in becoming secure and thriving like the rest of America.) 

Using communitarianism as the tool to organize tribal governance, the powers that be in the federal government are setting up the West—cowboys and Indians—to fight over water rights. This fight is planned to have a temporary winner, but that winner is being set up to commit hari-kari. Ta-da: no more freedom-loving cowboys and no more Indians. Hey BlackRock, soon the West will be up for grabs, and I know you are waiting. 

How is this being done? By designating certain groups—such as the poor and homeless, the elderly, and the needy—in order to justify the creation of a voluntary service community. 

First, the Indians. All but one or two of the tribes in the U.S. were nomadic peoples. They didn’t live in one specific place but moved with the seasons to follow food sources. As the West was settled, Native Americans were granted full legal citizenship in the U.S. and thus became subject to laws protected under the Constitution. 

Second, the cowboys. European settlers used the U.S. Constitution as a framework to establish governments that were truly of the people, by the people, and for the people—all the people. The laws our founders created protected individuals—their right to own property (rather than be property) and to live as they chose, as long as they did not infringe on others’ rights. But now, we see a denouncement of these values—personal ambition, self-reliance, individual happiness—and instead a push to “persuade each person to sacrifice his individuality into community and become one with it.” [1] 

Communitarianism is a socio-political ideology that values the needs, or “common good,” of society over the needs and rights of individuals. 

In placing the interests of society over those of individual citizens, communitarianism is considered the opposite of liberalism. Its proponents, called communitarians, object to extreme individualism and unchecked laissez-faire capitalism. 

Communitarianism has existed for some time, but while it never attracted large followings on either the right or the left, it caught the attention of many politicians seeking to reinvent government. This reinvention brought us “…in 1999, President Clinton’s E.O. 13132, along with a number of bills submitted by Congress, furthered ‘the new federalism.’ It ‘internationalized terminology and is a rewrite of the Constitution by redefining the levels of government, words, and the powers of government.’ It is an empowerment of federal agencies, i.e., reinvented government.” 

This reinvention of government shifted power away from the House and Senate. Senators and congressmen have become highly paid “actors” to keep us distracted from what is really happening in our government. Yes, they have become beholden to global elites. It should be obvious when we see them deliver articulate speeches against proposed legislation, yet nothing meaningful comes from it. Bad laws are rushed through. They barely pretend anymore. The theater plays out on TV for a day or two, and then attention shifts elsewhere. Do we notice? 

Communitarianism emphasizes each individual’s responsibility to serve the “common good” and highlights the social importance of the family unit. Communitarians believe that relationships within the community and contributions to the common good—more than individual rights—determine a person’s identity and sense of place. In essence, communitarians oppose extreme individualism and unregulated laissez-faire capitalism that may threaten the common good, however it is defined. 

What does communitarianism have to do with the tribal water issue in Montana and the Columbia River Basin? I would say just about everything. It involves the claim that America stole land from Native Americans due to discrimination when, in fact, the “issue” serves as a cover for taking land from property owners and transferring it to tribes through incentives—which may later be used against those same tribes once they are no longer useful, particularly when enough land has been transferred to shift political power. 

What, you ask, am I saying? Think about it. Why fill tribal lands with casinos—places where people spend their time gambling, contributing little, and cycling money back to those who issued it—while environments of alcohol and drug use are normalized? Yes, many non-Indians visit casinos, but they are not living in that environment full-time. The result is a system that takes land from legal owners, weakens communities, and fosters dependence—ultimately undermining both property rights and personal stability. 

[1] Ball, Jeri Lynn, The Great Communitarian Hoax, p. 9

 

Feature photo: Guðsþegn, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons