Land Grabbing Quotes
In developed nations land tends to be fungible—there is a fair market value to land and there is little emotional attachment to a particular piece of land. However for aborigines and citizens of many lesser developed countries, land is not fungible. Ancestor burial, tradition, family identity, dignity requires a particular plot of land—not just acreage. So taking of land—even with monetary compensation—is often liable to induce violent protest.
What is fascinating about this quotation is that although the head of a religion, Smith was not advocating the kinds of personal lifestyles of his church the way modern religious leaders do, but was concerned with the much larger issues of expansionism, corruption of the courts and judiciary, and land distribution. He was a classic reform candidate in that sense. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
50 years later a similar phrase was made famous be anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon.
In the midst of the French & Indian Wars, the Board of Trade drafted the royal proclamation of October 7, 1763, forbidding the granting of lands in the vast interior, which was specifically reserved to the Indians. Washington had earlier reservations about the attempt to protect Indian lands for the Indians. See {612772} Washington after the American Revolution did grant and protect Indian lands to the minority of the Indians who had allied with the Americans against the British and the majority of the other Indian tribes.
