For anyone who has read the Allan Eckert novels about the Miami Valley region from the period of 1750 to around 1800 you will understand why the following message brings great sadness to me. Progressives have attempted to claim the position of the Native American viewpoint, where shortsighted, pretentious, European settlers running from one tyranny to another brought with them to the New World a Victorian audaciousness that still persists among those who currently reside along the coast from Virginia to Maine. Those people pushed the Native American from one treaty to another across the settled continent of a wild frontier without a thought as to the long-term implications. Native Americans like Tecumseh fought to keep their land, but were pushed off for the proposed greater good—the European version of it—the same one that now desires socialism over capitalism. In those novels I personally identified with the Simon Kenton character most, Daniel Boone—George Washington and Andrew Jackson as close seconds. I understand those people, and their relationship with Native Americans was not so contentious. If left to Kenton, he would have been able to live alongside the Native Americans—he’d also own most of the Ohio River Valley—but that land was taken from him by snot nosed courts again in the European tradition of shortsighted consumption.
At the end of the road that I live on, thousands of Native American hunters traversed by canoe from their settlements near Xenia, Ohio down to the hunting lands of Kentucky exploring the edge of the world between the river that divided modern-day Ohio and Kentucky from one another. Without question they often camped where my home is currently built as it provides a high vantage point overlooking the valley where Trenton currently resides. It was good hunting ground with topography suitable for feeding a small army, which the Native Americans often had. My ancestors during this period were given land by the King of England right in the heart of Liberty Township and was part of the frontiersmen that settled the area as the French were partnering up with the Native Americans from the Eastern Lake Erie region—specifically Pontiac and his people the Ottawa who went on a bloody crusade against the English settlements which lead to the French and Indian War. The Treaty of Greenville took place right up the road from my house, and the Battle of Fallen Timbers right up the road from there. Few people have any idea what kind of massacre occurred at the current town of Piqua, Ohio. Even fewer these days know why Fairfield, Ohio was called what it was, or that Hamilton, Ohio was named after the Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, or that Monroe, Ohio was named after a sitting president. Fewer know that Liberty Township, Ohio was a direct tribute to the American Revolution and that it was the wild frontier that defined America, which is why Trenton, Ohio was so aptly named after the decisive victory of Washington after crossing the Delaware with his troops to deal a stinging blow to the English forces entrenched in New Jersey.
I grew up knowing long time residents who owned vast swaths of land, much the way the modern Niedermans do. And over the years I have watched them forced off that land because of high taxation. During the last levy campaign from Lakota, the public school that infests the region with government style education that is too expensive, too liberal, and severely inefficient, the most vocal supporters—the real-estate agents who want to sell houses declared that if people didn’t like the way the world was changing, under their guidance—that they should just move. Those same idiots claimed to love Liberty Township and West Chester for the large plots of farmland and green space—yet they brought with them a temperament that wanted to see a home placed on every acre—and those same real-estate agents who most fervently supported the Lakota Tax Increase of 2013 had the attention span of a flee—not considering what the long-term implications of their hostile behavior might lead to.
I know many of the developers who built the houses in Liberty Township and they have in common among them a lack of scope. Their primary concern, much like the levy supporters at Lakota was in protecting their investments without an understanding of the long-term implications of their decisions. They worked with real-estate agents to use Lakota to sell away most of the Liberty Township land to small-minded East Coast progressives transferring to the region because of the solid job growth of the Tri-State area. Most of those people move to the area not because of the deep history but because of the green space. But with each tax passed, the farms have packed up and moved away leaving the land to be divided up and sold away to more progressive minded newcomers who love taxes, government, and someone else being in charge of their life because they are simply too lazy—or unsophisticated to do it themselves. I have seen more letters than I care too like the one below spawned from the latest Lakota levy.
Hi Rich, just wanted to write and let you know we’re leaving West Chester. I fought with you to help defeat the levy each time, but this last time I said if it passed we were leaving. So, we are moving. Don’t get me wrong, I know the levy system will follow us, but we are moving to a place where we can spread out in our own forest land, but our taxes on over 10 acres will be lower than our small lot here in West Chester. The schools have continued to increase teacher salaries as you said and I continue to be disgusted by the indoctrination of our school children and the parents who refuse to believe what is being done to their children. I will continue to follow your blog and will stand with you on the conservative issues we face, but will no longer do it from West Chester. Gods speed.
A frequent Reader,
What is the cause of urban sprawl for those conservation minded idiots of the green movement? Taxes. If one wished to drive north, west, or east of Liberty Township just 30 miles, they will discover many people like that letter writer who is willing to move away from neighborhoods, public schools, and high taxes in favor of more land, more space, and less nosy progressives. It is the same tendency that caused Simon Kenton to settle the area in the first place; he wanted to be away from the nosy politics of the East. The Native Americans already living somewhat of a free existence, certainly didn’t want to deal with the newcomers either. And today, I feel the same way.
If there are lessons to be learned from history it’s that the idiots never stop coming. You can pack up and move away from them, but within a decade or two they will be back on your doorstep looking for money, and trying to find ways to get you to care for them and their children because they are too stupid and lazy to perform the task on their own. They’ll arrive with great pretension and speak often about the “greater good” but what they really want is for you to carry them through life. They want you to care for their kids; they want you to start a tractor so they can see it driving around while they go to Panera Bread, and they’ll cry about green space when you leave because of high taxes, and they’ll call the developers who built homes in the wake of the surrendered property greedy. Local politicians lick their lips with each home sale like insects caught in the web of a spider. For every lot of land divided up from what once was a large field of corn, or a former Native American campground, is now a quarter acre money-maker that pays $2000 to $6000 in taxes per year divided 50 to a 100 ways as opposed to the former plot of land of 10 acres that paid only a fraction of that, until the surrounding neighborhoods changed the taxation structure giving politicians money to spend and ways to name things after themselves.
It is truly a loss when someone of quality leaves a community like Liberty Township and 50 fools move in to replace them—and that is what is happening. Some call it progress—those would be progressives. Some call it the wave of the future. Some call it inevitable. Some call it the legal way of providing a future for the next generation through education funding. But I call it stupid and unsustainable. For every person of quality who leaves Liberty Township and West Chester because the Lakota school taxes are too high, thoughtless migrants replace them as much lower quality people who will inevitably destroy the property values of everyone involved, not just a few. There is no way to run from stupidity. Because stupid has no choice but to suck the life out of everyone they come in contact with and expect others to pay for their deficiencies with high taxes and parasitic indulgence.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 