Benjamin Tucker Quotes
We are here, on earth. Not one of us has any right to the earth.
Tucker, Benjamin R. Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One. New York: Benj. R. Tucker, Publisher, 1893.
This philosophical point of view is at odds with that of many Native Americans.
This is a fascinating quotation in that Cooper was a strong patriot of the American system. Today, this statement would be considered un-American and communistic. The notion that each person had a right to a share of land ownership. America changed in this respect. In Cooper’s day, there was so much land and so few people that it was part of the American concept that each man should have land. (Free men and not slaves of course). But as the population grew, speculators realized that there was opportunity and today in America ALL LAND is owned by people, corporations, other organizations and the government. The population is still growing and the potable water is in shorter and shorter supply. Already, we have to pay for water in much of the country. Perhaps in years to come, someone who argues that each person is entitled to clean air to breathe might be thought of as a radical communist.
He was referring to water rights where short term agreements might have disastrous consequences for future generations. Under the WWI Peace Treaty the high court of Egypt was an International Court. President Wilson nominated Crabites to this court and he served there for 3 decades during which he became a world class expert in Middle Eastern affairs. The failure to have a long-term perspective was a Middle Eastern problem then and did not improve in the next century.
Withdrawal meant not allowing certain public land to be sold or allotted to homesteading, commercial development, mining, industrial, ranching, or agricultural use. It was reserved as wilderness areas and/or national parks or forests.
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was an American anarchist. A 19th-century proponent of individualist anarchism which he called "unterrified Jeffersonianism", Tucker was the editor and publisher of the American individualist anarchist periodical Liberty (1881–1908) as well as a member of the socialist First International.
