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Around 90 A.D., the Roman historian Tacitus traveled through Germania observing the lives of its inhabitants. It was quite an eye-opening journey for him. Among his many observations, he noted how the Germanic people chose to live in small separate dwellings, separate from even extended family. Often these dwellings would house just a mother, father, and their children. That seems normal to us today, but it certainly wasn’t to Tacitus and the Romans, or much of the civilized world at that time.
Authors Michael Lotus and James Bennett wrote of this in their groundbreaking book “America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come.” The Germanic tribes would take this radical cultural trait with them, when in the 5th Century A.D. they would conquer Britannia. In fact, the German tribe of Angles would give England its future name. While this cultural trait would not remain as powerful in Germania or in much of Europe, it would further migrate, most notably to America, Canada, and Australia. The idea of owning a single-family home is not unknown to the world, of course, but it planted its deepest cultural seeds here in the United States. The epitome of the American Dream is to own one’s home – a home is a man’s castle.
Why the history lesson? Because the yearning to own one’s own home is under threat and the ability to buy and own a piece of land in America is under intense attack from the Left. But then what isn’t under attack from the Left. Our communities, families, churches, every aspect of middle-class lifestyle is seen as an obstacle to the Left’s utopian dream of a new society, a roadblock in the efforts to radically transform society.
The Left is now pushing policies that promote a “densification” of living. These new “smart cities” include dense living in small, cramped dwellings in cities where the need and use of a car are eliminated. The question of what people may want becomes irrelevant. That some younger people choose to live in dense living arrangements in cities is often true. But most younger people, when they marry and have families, choose to live outside of dense cities; they vote with their feet and choose to live in suburbs.
The war on home ownership, the suburbs, and efforts to force people into dense living arrangements is not new. For years, Stanley Kurtz has written about the Left’s attack on the suburbs, as have demographers such as Wendall Cox and Joel Kotkin. Kurtz’s book “Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities” detailed the war on the suburbs that Barack Obama had undertaken almost immediately after being elected President. The war on the suburbs was just a part of his radical transformation of America.
The Left is attacking middle class life across the world, but we see the war on single family homes and on the suburbs happening most directly in America and across the Anglosphere. The reasons for this middle class life lies in our uniqueness in choosing this form of living. But it’s all about culture, and not about being “Anglo”. Immigrants to America eagerly fold into this lifestyle choice. I live in a suburban community 25 miles outside of Los Angeles where, while non-Hispanic whites constitute the largest group (45%), they are not a majority. There are large minorities of Hispanics and Asians, many of them first generation immigrants. They all opt to share in the American Dream of home ownership. And before this becomes a racial conversation, which today is where the Left takes everything, let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with “white flight.”
As Joel Kotkin recently notes,
“…today suburbia is where integration is expanding more robustly. In the United States, the majority of ethnic minorities live in suburbs, accounting for virtually all the suburban growth over the past decade. Suburbs also have become a preferred locale for Australia’s immigrant population, just as they have in Canada and the United Kingdom.”
All of this begs the question, why? Why not let people make these choices for themselves? There are several reasons. Much of the war on home ownership and the suburbs today is part of the Green Revolution, the war on cars and fossil fuels. To save the planet we must do away with the internal combustion engine and even further, eliminate the car culture that made modern America and the suburbs that the Left so hates.
But it goes beyond the radical environmental movement, for the war on the suburbs goes back decades, Hollywood has made innumerable movies about the suffocating and boring life of the suburbs. Much of the derision that the Left feels about “1950’s America” is the loathing and hatred of middle-class suburban living. Again, it is a war of the elites against the middle class.
There are several other theories, one is that in the “smart cities” of tomorrow, it will be much easier to monitor and observe, and thus control people who live in dense living environments. We saw this very clearly in China in the days of Covid. But we see it even here in America and even more so in English cities today. There are not just a few of our betters who look to China with envy in how they are seeking to control society.
This leads to perhaps the best answer as to why this is happening; it is part of that war on the middle class and more specifically, the war on freedom. That there has been a war against the middle class in America for the last half century seems clear. The greatest threat to a government and its elites that want to control society comes from independent agencies. These include community organizations, churches, private and homeschool educational groups and, of course, most significantly, the family. And what gives the family its most independence other than the cherished dream of owning a single-family home.
A mobile and independent actor in society, free to make his own choices in where to work, where to play, and most telling, where to live, is a grave threat to those that wish to control the economy, control society, and control our very lives. The good news is that while the Left and the ruling class have, through their draconian policies, sought to undermine the middle class and our dreams of owning a home, they are running up against culture currents that have been ingrained in our psyche, not just since those 1950’s, but for well over 2000 years from those villages along the Danube and Rhine.
We cannot, must not and will not give up our castles so easily.
I live in a suburb just north of Seattle. You can see the future the left is planning for us: they are demolishing entire blocks of single-family housing and replacing them with apartments, condos, and townhouses. To make matters worse the cost – whether it’s a mortgage or a rental payment – is more than the cost of a single-family home just 15 or 20 years ago.
There’s a group buying up all of these apts where I live, raising the rent and pricing everyone out of them. The government comes in and guarantees section 8 money and American’s are being replaced with illegals. At our expense. No joke! I know the guy who just sold them 4 building’s right by the other buildings they own or just purchased. It’s so disheartening.
As a child I lived in a small town beyond the suburbs. St Louis, Missouri was a scary place full of dangerous black men. The worst place ,in St Louis, was Pruitt Igoe housing project. In 68 or 69 they torched the place and the threw bricks (From the tenth story) at the first responders.
Smart cities inhabited by dumb people.
Ah yes! Setting up low income, and section 8, housing throughout the suburbs and small towns has been part of the design as well. It has helped to spread illegal aliens, crime, drugs, etc, Also breaking the area and home values down. It’s all by design. The suburbs in Minnesota are trash since they moved the 3rd world there and have been taken over by corrupt, illegitimate communists owned by China! .
This is an outstanding article outlining what the Left has plans for the American people.
The voters can fix this if they get out and vote after engaging their minds, venting in the comments section will only help if it encourages voters to vote.
Let’s train a bunch of recently released criminals how to become professional house squatters, complete with legal-looking documents to shove in the owner’s face when they complain.
Or make abandoned warehouses into urban guerilla training facilities… and coordinate all such things thru encrypted apps, and funded through self=feeding extortion loops such as BLM et. al.
Naw… that’s ridiculous.
Just ask yourself, if you were an enemy of the US, what would you do to help destroy it?
I’ve heard several reports of squatters here and in England. (I even know someone who lost a small ramshackle house in Texas to a squatter.)
What I learned most is that these low-life squatters had even lower I.Q.s, yet had detailed knowledge of their “rights”. They’re being fed info, and share the info.
Even though I’d be tempted to let a woke squatter stay in my house (the property & school taxes in Texas have soared up a jaw-dropping 500%), I’d end up unloading a 12 gauge bullpup on ’em, instead.
An Arizona rancher, Nethercott lost his ranch to two illegal aliens for showing restraint and turning them into the police. (He bopped one with his pistol, so an activist judge took his ranch)
You know the FBI is aware of BLM and Jihadist terrorist training centers, maybe they are providing support?
It probably does offer support, and to Antifa, too.
The left is against all forms of social
Mobility
Hmm…. “smart cities”. Translation: Ghetto
Hmm… “density”. Translation: Forced herding of human beings into confined spaces.
With that concept in mind, seeing that it worked so very, very well throughout history, someone’s up to no good; and it’s not urban planning; it’s controlling people planning, and may just be a stop along the way to destruction.
You know, after a long journey, there’s nothing like a nice “hot shower”. Translation: Gas chamber
Pol Pot and The Mahdi (Sudan 1880-90’s) ran everyone out of the cities. I’d rather live in the country there is a chance one might steal a little grain, from the state.
The new suburbia: First there was the modest shopping center surrounded by open space. Then the developers moved in and built sprawling apartment/condo complexes. Virtually everything is within walking distance or a 3-minute drive away. Single family neighborhoods are under constant threat of being swallowed up or surrounded by housing complexes going up on any unused space. Many choose to ignore the impact these developments have on demographics, community life, or resources. The shiny object almost always wins and no, homeowner property taxes do not go down.
“Kurtz’s book “Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities” detailed the war on the suburbs that Barack Obama had undertaken almost immediately after being elected President. The war on the suburbs was just a part of his radical transformation of America.”
Obama is such a blinking hypocrite as he travels between his three McMansions. He is the absolute worst thing that could have happened to this country. The sooner he shuffles off this mortal coil the better.
The evil, Judeo-Christian, Muslim, Marxist, and Nazi moral code of altruism and self-sacrifice is the absolute worst thing that could have happened to this country.
The evil moral code that proclaims that man is not an end in himself but the means for the ends of others. That proclaims that you are your brother’s keeper. That proclaims that it is man’s highest virtue and duty to sacrifice himself to Almighty God and neighbor, or Obama and Almighty Society.
“America’s inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.” – Ayn Rand
Ya know, I’m trying to figure out what your obsession with altruism has to do with the Left wanting to shrink the suburbs and force all into little lego cities.
Or is it that you actually have nothing to write about re: this article but you simply want to see your name on the screen. You truly are the consummate egotistical jerk.
Well you finally appear to have answered a post of mine with a non-response “response”.
As always, it’s a foolish non sequitur lecture, your specialty.
How you get from home ownership to altruism is beyond my comprehension. But I suppose when you basically never have anything to say beyond your three or four go to topics there really isn’t a lot to fall back on.
Can you say “square peg” (Objectivism), round hole (everyone else’s reality).
Wait a minute, only three moronic posts today? I guess shoe horning only goes so far.
Yes, the tenements of the past worked out so well and the “projects” of today are just spiffy. No crime, filth or misery at all. 🙁
Those German barbarians were selfish and greedy heathen Pagan barbarians, they were not saved and redeemed Christians.
Owning your own house is selfish and greedy. The only castle that matters to a good Christian is Christ’s Castle in his Kingdom in Heaven. If the price to pay to enter Christ’s castle is to give your temporary castle here on Earth to your illegal invader brother that’s a small price to pay for Eternal Salvation. Jesus wants us to share, you are your brother’s keeper. The love of money is the root of all evil, that’s why capitalism is evil. Giving all your wealth to the poor is the way to Eternal Salvation.
There’s much in common between Karl Marx and Jesus Christ. Neither is a pro-capitalist.
“As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?…
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me….
At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” – Matthew 10 17-23
“In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.” – Luke 14:33
Spoken just like someone who hopes to receive said ‘everything’
Even the devil can quote scripture
It’s amazing how todays’ modern, secularized, Christians on the Right are “Cafeteria Christians” picking and choosing, out of context, and interpreting out of context, whatever fits their secular, modern, capitalist lifestyles.
But the altruist-collectivist-socialist-theocratic Christians on the Left who are more consistent and more fully contextual are the ones who understand the real thrust of Christianity towards the full-blown tyranny of theocracy.
Yes, you are that stupid. A new low. Some how I don’t think any Christians, secularized or not will be selling their homes anytime soon.
Christians on the left? Are you serious.
You may be the most jealous, pathetic self-centered loon on the planet.
Yes, Christians on the Left, your beloved Lutheran Church, the Catholic Church, Methodist Church, are as we speak receiving hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars from Joe Biden to feed, house, clothe, and help the illegal alien invasion-destruction of America all in the name of Christian altruism and sacrifice for Jesus.
Separation of Church and State? Not anymore Joe Biden and the Christian churches are united in destroying America.
You know nothing of Lutheranism except for what you think you know, which is always wrong.
The three Lutheran synods in North America are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS).
The ELCA is the largest of the three, with over 4.5 million members. The LCMS is the second-largest, with just over 2 million members. The WELS is the smallest, with about 380,000 members.
The ELCA, LCMS, and WELS are all Lutheran Church-synods within Protestant Christianity. Each denomination contains different beliefs about church doctrine, worship practices, and ministry standards.
So, little man, there are about 7 million of us. We ain’t going anywhere. As always, sucks to be you.
So if you want to whine and moan and have a temper tantrum about what social services we have, here’s what you need to do if you have the guts:
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
8765 W Higgins Road
Chicago, IL 60631
Toll-Free: 800-638-3522
But you won’t. You are a coward who believes in nothing.
Give it up. You definitely hit rock bottom here, I get that you can’t afford a home of your own because you don’t work for a living. But why torture us endlessly with your whacked out objectivist gibberish.
One of the first things I learned about the bible was that there’s a context to the texts – OT and NT. Secondly, there were more than a few interpretations which inevitably begat misinterpretations.
Jesus didn’t tell the entire world to “first give up everything” they had in order to follow him. He told this particular “rich young ruler” to give up everything he had. That’s b/c Jesus looked upon and beheld (loved) this particular man, and he recognized the rich man’s particular stumbling block to the kingdom of God. His highest value in life was his wealth. In other words, his sin was greed.
Jesus never condemned ALL rich people for their wealth, and you failed to say the second part: “But with God, all things are possible.”
— We cannot, must not and will not give up our castles so easily. —
The attack will come through indirect methods. The anti-suburb forces will strive to eliminate the conditions that make suburban life possible. The attack on fossil fuels is the most obvious of the lot. Ever-increasing property taxes
and the steady increase in “public” schools’ hostility to American norms and parental rights (to say nothing of actual education) are another arrow in the totalitarian quiver. And the relative safety of the suburbs must be attacked as well, possibly by reducing police funding and possibly by making it impossible to get an apprehended malefactor prosecuted. No doubt there are other methods.
Don’t forget about eliminating single family zoning. That just happened in Charlotte, NC,
They want t o force us all to live in one of those Beehive Apartment Buildings in the middle of the city they want destroy little town America and return it to Wildlands the EPA tried t hat dirty little trick with the Sacketts and failed but its not over yet the Eco-Freaks running the EPA will try again to force the CWA upon us
The Angles were cannibalistic troglodytes without any cultural or whatsoever legacy of civilisation!
We gonna face a harsh near future..
Odumbo is the classic case of ‘what I deem good for thee is not for me’. Big, separate, secluded houses in Hawaii, Washington DC and Martha’s Vineyard.
Pitchforks. Fires. Guillotines. The French had it right in the latter part of the 18th century.
I have this on good authority:
They will build houses and live in them,
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They will not build and others live there,
they will not plant and others eat. . .
My chosen will themselves enjoy the use of what they make.
They will not toil in vain or raise children to be destroyed.
for they are the seed blessed by Adonai . . .
Isaiah 65:20-25
The left is attacking the capitalist way of life, a d trying to push us into a communist way of life, with zero freedoms, zero control over even our children – we will all just be numbers, grateful for slave labor ass opposed to the opposite for those who protest. WAKE UP, THE WAR STARTED A LONG TIME AGO.
Glad to read a comment where someone actually gets what is happening. Communism coming to the US. China announced they are going to set up a “station” in Cuba (which is 90 miles off the state of Florida). I read today that our southern border along Mexico isn’t out only concern as invaders are coming into Florida by boats.
If the US was smart we should have our military on all our borders. Hopefully, if we can get rid of this Communist Biden/Obama regime and get Trump back in office the US may have a chance to fight and survive. Taking away home ownership as is being discussed is just another thing Communism does.. You own nothing but the government owns all. My grandparent fled Communism so I know I want nothing to do with it.
People know the evil that has attacked our society. Without God as Creator, we can abandon the created order of reality and mold it to whatever we wish. Men can be women, and women can be fathers, and children can be taught in the earliest years to question their gender. Genital mutilatioin is called gender affirmation. And with the devaluation of human life having evolved through the animal world, the right to die soon becomes the duty to die. Without God as the standard of truth, truth becomes “truthiness” which means I have my truth and you have yours. Even when the Constitution is read, it is not to be viewed objectively, rather it is a living document interpreted according to circumstances and racial history. Its meaning depends on what the people in charge want to say, not what the document says. The Times are upside down, only a person who is insane would adapt to the lunacy. SECULARISM AND PAGANISM THRIVE WHEN PEOPLE REJECT CHRISTIANITY..