Farming and Revolution
.png)
"It was the Constitution that welded them together politically, legally, and economically,
but it was nature that provided a transcendent feeling of nationhood."
When I read the profound introduction to Andrea Wulf's Founding Gardeners, I couldn't help but find comparisons between the time in which Benjamin Franklin was constantly sending seeds back to America for the cultivation of a future independent nation and Washington uprooting all native British trees and shrubbery from his land to the homesteading and off-grid living explosion that's happened in the last 20 years. Yes, there's been talk originally of another civil war but, lately, more of a united movement of a quiet revolution that's happening on both sides of the aisle.
Pre-American Revolution was an ever-increasing, tension-building intensity between the British Empire and the colonists. Most of us were taught that the revolution was fueled by the amplified raising of taxes but, in reality, the realization of colonial power as an economic boon for England made the awareness of non-representation not only contemptuous but a theoretical devaluing of worth. Britain relied upon these colonies for goods and services in the advancement of their coffers without giving the allowance for self-rule, much less parliamentary representation.
As Franklin campaigned for the British king and politicos in favoring American representation, the continuation of disfavor alerted him enough to begin an undertaking to procure every useful seed he came across. With diligence, he sent instructions home for each seed care and cultivation specifically for America's profit and self-sufficiency.
"Farmers, [Benjamin Franklin] now believed, held the key to America's future because they,
not the henchman of the British Empire, would create a new nation."
In fact, many of America's founding fathers were farmers and increasingly became more astute at the development of their own fields.
"Agriculture and the independent small-scale farmer were, in their eyes,
the building blocks of the new nation."
Even after our independence was declared, they continued to exchange seeds, cutting, and information and learn about crop rotation and other more modern techniques to aid in the improvement of the nutrient-depleted farmland. While Britain held supremacy in manufacturing, they relied on America and their other territories to produce and supply them with the means to do so. Without product, there was no manufacturing. America's representing body understood this leverage with products like tobacco, cotton, wheat, maple syrup, whiskey, and rice. But, being well-educated in the philosophical greats, they were even more knowledgeable of the God-given rights inherent within man and the inevitable usurpation of that freedom by governing bodies.
"Slowly colonists began to equate home production and agriculture
with the upholding of domestic liberty."
"As long as a man had a piece of land of his own sufficient to support his family,
Franklin had said, he was independent."
With governmental oversight on food products, monopoloid energy companies, and economic manipulation, the certainty of returning to a personal relationship with the land and its cultivation seems unavoidable. Instead of natural, chemical-free products, we find manufactured foods filled with additives and dyes for longevity purposes, visual enhancement, or taste addictiveness. In most states, it has become mandatory to not only pay for water but also for electricity even if we do not require it. To be self-sufficient can even "legally" remove a homeowner from their land in some states. And, finally, riddled throughout our economic codes, we have come to the point of having a tax system that allows for double taxation, if not more, just called by a different name [eg. for the purchase of a vehicle: sales tax, state tax, registration fees (yearly/biyearly), and county property tax(yearly)]. The increased prohibition on our natural and constitutional rights has caused a progression of movement toward this off-grid self-sufficient living, exponentially in the last 10 years. While the UN speaks of a one-world rule and "smart cities," more and more people are moving out into rural areas, some even buying desert parcels for nil, and others are converting porches and yards into garden plots.
Whether mere coincidence or not, the signs indicate path. The time is coming when we must make the choice to understand freedom as the expression of nature, beauty, love thy neighbor, truly hearing and seeing, freedom of speech and selfhood, and sovereign crowns or judgment, isolation, condemnation, repetition, uniformity, hate, censorship, and servitude.
From Unearthing the Sacred:
"Instead, we accept our lot in life, even while waving our proverbial flag representing freedom. One thing we Americans have forgotten happens to be that our Founding Fathers did not place notice of liberty as a right given to us by any being outside of ourselves but God. “Endowed by the Creator…” places this right as divine, not subject to another’s will. Yet, when we talk of our freedom, we speak of it in terms of being given to us by the government as a privilege and believe we are subject to any newly enacted laws that violate this God-given authority. Perhaps what muddies up this idea for us (besides the constant reiteration of governmental authority) may lie in how freedom has been defined. We seem to tend to view it as an exemption from consequence and therefore allow governmental restriction. However, this is not what freedom is. Freedom does not in any way, shape, or form make the allowance for violation of another’s free will. To violate another’s will ensures consequences as it violates our covenant with God and, therefore, both ours and the other party’s Selfhood. It may be the only time that an outside entity may step in to redress the abuse or injury. In truth, there never was a need for the exuberance for which our employed representatives have enacted laws, only a definition of violation needs to be expressed. The Founding Fathers, in their masterpiece of declarative intent, expressed these rules of violation eloquently. They are, as follows:
- Usurping Self-sovereignty
- Infringement upon Self-stewardship
- Defacement of Self-representation
- Appropriation of proprietorship without consent
- Threats and bodily harm made to personhood
- Forced isolationism or seclusion
- Subverting of livelihood
- The imposed decrees of non-consensual tributes and unethical laws"
Comments
Post a Comment