The Empire claims to own more than 60% of the state of Utah. This is a situation common among the western states.

When former Emperor Clinton ran for reelection in 1996, he paid off curried favour with environmentalists by declaring the Kaiparowits plateau in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument a national monument. The plateau just happens to be the home to large coal reserves which the leaders of the State of Utah would like to see mined (and taxed).

Last year, Emperor Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar scrapped seventy-seven oil and gas leases around national parks and wild areas. This again cost the citizens of Utah thousands of dollars in tax revenues.

Last Saturday, Utah’s Governor Gay Herbert authorized the use of eminent domain to take some of the energy-rich parcels of land away from the Columbian Empire and restore their value to the citizens of Utah. This is a twist to Kelo v. New London (545 US 469) which those wise Justices of the Supreme Court missed. Their decision allowed the theft of property by a government entity from a private citizen. Now we get to live with the spectre of governments fighting each other for property.

But who really owns the land? It should be the citizens, not some far-off bureaucracy in "the District."

When a massive empirical government spins out of control there is no telling where it will end up. When men forsake the Truth of biblical principles, then in society “all hell will break out." The eighth commandment declares that civil government have the responsibility of protecting property rights...Thou shalt not steal. But stealing has become such a standard of normal activity for the Empire that it no longer even expresses regret for its theft. It is just business as usual to take from the productive in order to give it to the unproductive.

Let’s get out of the Empire. We can return to sanity. We can have our own Tennessee Nation.

From Solitude,
David O Jones