Land of our Fathers - The New Mexico model

American Gun Culture presentation

Land of our Fathers

The New Mexico model

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

The fact is we never really studied the Constitution in school. It was likely our teachers were never taught in detail, either. It was given lip service, and, today, most of us are woefully unprepared to defend anything on the basis of the Constitution. That wasn’t always the case.

A number of Europeans were astounded when they observed common Americans quote chapter and verse from their Constitution as well as their Bibles in the first quarter of the 19^th Century. Those Americans didn’t have much, but they had expansive knowledge of those two guiding documents.

They were also responsible for the emergence of the greatest revolutions in the history of mankind … the agricultural and the industrial revolutions. Those two documents served them well and perhaps we had better start rekindling that same foundation or … we are doomed.

The Genesis

The Constitution references land as what we must now describe as an inadequate proviso rather than a non-negotiable term. That looms as a historical shortfall in the “law of our land”. As a result, we have to argue the point of private property as opposed to setting that immoveable pillar aside as fundamental protection.

The Founders knew what the ownership of land meant. I have used the terms shield and armor when it is combined with the non-negotiable cornerstone of our entire system … the sovereign American citizen.

In our system, the two are not mutually exclusive. If one or the other is removed, King George returns in force each and every time. The matter is so simplistic its genius was revolutionary.

The federal government now holds title to 640,000,000 acres of lands administered by land agencies and 173,790,000 more acres of Indian and military reservations. That combined land mass is huge, It is bigger than France, Germany, the low countries, and the British Isles combined.

Another measure of it would be to combine the states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Illinois, Hawaii, parts of Louisiana, and all of the island territories of the United States. Nothing like that was remotely fathomed. In fact, such hoarding and control by the Crown was a major reason the Revolutionary War was fought.

Aside from the implication of freedom, there were two reasons public lands were slated for disposal. The disposal was intended to reduce federal debt and accelerate the economy by empowering the private citizenry. The Framers knew what debt meant as much as they knew what tyranny was on the backs of the producing citizenry.

Subsequent generation legislators failed to grasp and maintain the promise, and, as a result … our Union is weaker.

New Mexico Model

New Mexico is an interesting model to study in order to understand the scope of Constitutional drift.

First, a point must be made. Government ownership has become synonymous with federal ownership, but it isn’t just the federal government that poses a threat. We must recognize the growing menace of the state government usurping its own authority to hold lands.

New Mexico’s Enabling Act granted sections 2, 16, 32, and 36 from each township as a mechanism to support the educational system. As such, the state was not founded on equal footing with the eastern states. We all have been taught to assume that the deeding of state trust lands for education is a good thing. We can all swoon and swear that we must fund the school systems, but I’ll submit it has always been an administrative nightmare for private land ownership and a platform of dependence that has grown the welfare state. It has no bounds. In fact, it was used as a tool to recently designate 575,000 acres of this county as national monument.

Even if we agree setting aside 11% of each county for educational funding is okay, the county burden is not shared. Almost half of the counties are over subscribed and must give away tax receipts because of the absence of tax payments on those lands. Because so many counties had claims on lands that precluded the full transfer of title to those four sections, the state claimed title to other lands to make up the difference. The counties of Catron, Chaves, De Baca, Eddy, Grant, Harding, Hidalgo, Lea, Luna, Quay, Roosevelt, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance, and Union have carried unequal burdens of higher percentage state holdings.

Moreover, many counties like Dona Ana and Otero didn’t come up with their prescribed share because the federal government either increased its holding of lands or failed to dispose of properties that allowed the full measure of state trust holdings to be accrued. Only 9% of Dona Ana lands are state trust lands, but only 13% of the lands are private. A total of 87% are held by government. Otero suffers from 89%.

For that matter, 56% of the state is held by government in one form or the other and New Mexico enjoys a relative higher rate of private land ownership than many of the other western states!

It all adds up to a debacle of private land ownership … unequal footing relative to all states east of the 100^th Meridian … a travesty in terms of the protective armor to the American citizenry, and … the unavoidable reliance on government … all of which add to permanent dependency. There is little wonder that New Mexico’s rainbow trajectory of citizens on welfare rolls will outnumber those citizens gainfully employed.

The Tale of Two States

New Mexico is a sizeable chunk of real estate. It covers 77,819,520 acres of creation that rancher Don Thompson reverently reminds his land steward colleagues, “There is no land on earth that gives more, and … expects less than New Mexico.”

It is also a real life tale of two states. One state is the model that most resembles the neighbor to the east, Texas. It is there, east of the Rio Grande, private property ownership exceeds government ownership. It is also there that the majority of the state’s tax and revenue harvests occur. Oil and gas are the major providers, but that is not the entire story. It can be argued that it is there the genesis of entrepreneurial innovation still exists in abundance. The major impetus is the dominion of private ownership in the face of government.

The western side of the state, the area where county boundaries generally touch or lie west of the Rio Grande, is where the largest subsidy and welfare sink has been created. It is there 75% of the land ownership is government. Of course, the federal government is the major player and they dominate the landscape and the land planning.

If population was greater, the western half of New Mexico would dominate the list of the nation’s counties at highest risk. Only Luna County in the southwest makes the list because it reaches the population cutoff. If large counties such Catron, McKinley, and Rio Arriba reached the census criteria, they would dwarf the poverty scales in the selection process. They struggle to keep youth, they suffer from high and debilitating rates of alcoholism, and it is there welfare recipients easily exceed employed citizens. The counties are examples of the expanding collapse of societal structure.

With such poverty, the assumption would be that the area is void of resources. On the contrary, western New Mexico is rich with rare earth minerals, timber, uranium, copper, silver, gold, coal, and, to the north in San Juan County, oil and gas is the salvation of local economy. The area is a natural resource giant mired in a bureaucratic induced welfare coma. It is becoming an extractive resource and agricultural wasteland. It is also a model of supreme and growing environmental despair.

It has become an under achieving society, but we can make the argument it is an underachieving society on the basis of forced dependency by the overpowering presence of the Crown … combined governments.

Economic Reality

The state’s budget is running about $6.0 billion per year. Of that total the state contributes about $750 million per year from collected fees and royalties. The federal government transfers something over $2 billion into the state, and the private sector contributes the margin, about $3.1 billion. Remember, the feds take money from taxpayers across the country to support 36% of New Mexico’s budget.

What happens to us when the Feds finally face the fact we are belly up and cannot transfer our annual check? We are in trouble. We are also woefully vulnerable and unprepared for the fallout.

Although the state is not as efficient in generating revenues as the private sector, they certainly do a better job than the Feds capturing money on government owned lands. In fact, we know the State consistently collects about $75 per state trust acre annually. That compares to the loss of $29 per acre for each federal acre managed by federal land agencies across the country. The point becomes if the State Land Office was charged with the management of all federal lands exclusive of Indian Reservations by simply applying state performance metrics to those lands an additional $2 billion would be generated. That would erase the federal transfer and save the feds an additional $2.2 billion or a net swing of $4.2 billion for going home to Washington and allowing New Mexico to fend for itself.

You say that can’t be done?  Thirty nine other states do it.

The problem is the politics of New Mexico will fight such a dismantling of the federal welfare juggernaut. What an absolute travesty that has become.

Timelessness

Remember the magnitude of the federal holdings … additional lands that should have be placed in the hands of American citizens … a new country within a country … to have and to hold, to cherish, and to extend to the next generation of Americans to create wealth, reduce debt, and accelerate the economy.

Our Constitution was an amazing document. In fact, it is more amazing each and every time it is studied. It is timeless. It was created by study, by debate, by application of natural law, and by our Founders who, through constant prayer and respect for our Deity, knew what tyranny was. The fix is as simplistic as the genius of its creation, but, first, you have to study it and you must learn to quote it by chapter and verse in the manner you should also quote your Bible.

Then … you must pledge your life to the outcome.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The metrics for Arizona would equate to $2.5 billion for the management of New Mexico’s federal lands. If New Mexico is timid about managing those lands … contract with Arizona!”  This column is based upon a presentation given this week to the American Gun Culture Club

Below are some quotes and excerpts that relate to this important column:

"The political institutions of America, its various soils and climates, opened a certain resource to the unfortunate and to the enterprising of every country and insured to them the acquisition and free possession of property." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration

"The first foundations of the social compact would be broken up were we definitely to refuse to its members the protection of their persons and property while in their lawful pursuits." --Thomas Jefferson

"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."  –James Madison

"If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments."  –James Madison

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.  If `Thou shalt not covet' and `Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."  –John Adams

And from The Primacy of Property Rights and the American Founding we have:


If property rights were understood to be as important as other rights, how are we to account for the failure of the Declaration of Independence to mention the word and its conspicuous substitution of the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” thus altering the traditional Lockean formula, “life, liberty, and property”? Does this not suggest at least a subordination of property rights to other rights? Indeed, some contemporary scholars have argued that the language of the Declaration manifests the Founders’ intention to subordinate private property to happiness, understood as public happiness. Yet the founding documents make abundantly clear that their authors understood the right to property to be an integral part of the unalienable right to liberty. The authors of the Virginia Bill of Rights, the immediate antecedent to the Declaration, made this explicit. The first article of that charter states that all men “have certain inherent rights . . . namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety”.

&

The second reason that property rights were viewed as primary was that they served as a practical guarantee for other rights. In effect, not only were property rights the most vulnerable, they were also the first line of defense for the other rights. According to the Founders, property was not only a right in itself, but also a means to the preservation of other rights. Economic freedom was understood to serve the other personal freedoms in two ways. First, property meant practical power. An economically independent people were best able to maintain their political independence. Indeed, the ownership of property was of immense importance to the practical independence not only of the people as a whole, but also of the individual citizen. As Edmund Morgan wrote in The Birth of the Republic, the “widespread ownership of property is perhaps the most important single fact about Americans of the Revolutionary period. . .