Losing The Family Farm

“…The land on which we stand is the only thing we have,

That can withstand the weight of our lives.

So learn to treat the land, like you treat your own two hands,

Honor its strength, cherish the gifts it holds…”

No loss is greater than the loss of something that has been held for generations. Losing a thing that ancestors lived and died to build, and to keep for you, is an event of great failure and sadness. The family farm is in danger of becoming an anachronism, fading from the fabric of the American tapestry. The reasons are many, but they can be distilled to what we choose to value. Farmers often want an easier life for their children, and steer their career paths more towards desks than dirt. For generations now country kids have left the farm lured by the promise of the city lights. Consumers often choose economy over locally produced foods. Mega farms have become huge corporations greedily devouring smaller farms like a black hole. Financiers look to the bottom line, and have little concern for barns, silos, or a family’s heritage. Often the value of the land is greater as a development than a farm. In the end, everyone is looking for something that they value more than the land. Whether it be money, ease, fame, or progress; we surrender our birthright for a bowl of soup.

Value is determined by what something costs. When that price has been paid by someone else, the value of a treasure can be lost on a generation. As it is with the family farm, so it is with our nation. Those who have come before us suffered and sacrificed to keep this country for those to come. Will we be the generation to lose America because of what we choose to value? Our obsession for safety eclipses our natural desire for freedom. Liberty is cast aside in our rush for prosperity. Timeless values are belittled as quaint in our pursuit of pleasure, and we insulate ourselves from the sometimes precious life experiences of pain, poverty, and hard work.

President Obama ran on the idea of transforming America. Transformation usually implies making something better. You can “transform” a log destined for firewood into a fine piece of furniture, but turning furniture into firewood is seldom thought of as a transformation. The President’s latest attempt at “transformation” is relegating the need for congressional approval to the wood pile. The founders understood human nature. People, even Presidents, do not like to be thwarted in directions they desire to take. Tyranny almost always finds its source in the unchecked power of one human being, and because of that, the founders incorporated things like the separation of powers, and checks and balances into our Constitution. We have discovered that the power of the polls is not entirely effective in checking a Presidents power when he is willing to obfuscate, invent statistics, and ignore the Constitution. At least part of the check on the office of President is dependent on the integrity of the person we put there. When that is lacking, when the President dismisses the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, then we have a problem. This is a position of great power, on the edge of uncontrollable. We give our President the nuclear football; we give him broad ranging executive powers that wrongly used could devastate our economy. When the President demonstrates a lack of integrity, and most importantly, a lack of integrity regarding the limitations of the Constitution, an alarm must be raised, because we are at that point beginning our descent to the morass of tyranny from which we have struggled to be free. It is a point of peril, and one where Congress needs to take up the weapons the Constitution provides to deliver us. If they do not, then they have doomed themselves to being inconsequential figure heads, and the President will become the “Lawgiver”.

IMHO: We have greatly become a nation that loves shortcuts and ease. Rather than hard-fought persuasion and negotiation, there is coercion and the imposition of power. It’s quicker. It’s easier. It works. That an action may betray Constitutional principles is inconsequential if it is practically viable. We take action or we don’t take action, not because of people, but because of politics; not because of principle, but because of power. We’ve left the family farm for a cubicle in the city, because the farm was too much work. The generations before us have done the heavy lifting, and we have grown fat and soft, losing the lessons that they learned with their blood sweat and tears. If we do not recall those lessons, if we count the country less to be valued than our ease, pleasure and wealth; then America will pass from our charge, and like the family farm, something wonderful will be lost forever.

“…You see sir, seeds give birth to being;

What we grow is who we are- it is sacred, it is sweet.

And greed, greed is the destroyer,

Takes vision from our eyes, and the land beneath our feet…”

Chris Dorman, “Family Farm”