An infatuation with the land exists deep within the American psyche. In fact, this infatuation is ingrained within us as soon as we start our education as young elementary schoolers. We are presented with a glorified image of colonization, another quest for American land and its resources. We learn about Manifest Destiny – the belief that European Americans were destined to conquer the entire continental United States – and gleefully dress up as pioneers with this same goal on our minds. We sing along to the quintessential American folk song “This Land is Your Land.” Indeed, it seems that a love of the land permeates our understanding of American identity.
Yet, we consistently see perversions of this “loving” relationship. The President of this country has a climate denialist on his panel for climate change. Does he really love the land? The new head of our Environmental Protection Agency would give the land into the hands of corporations to be exploited for its resources. Does he really love the land? This so called “love” does not appear to mean being grateful for the earth. Rather, this perverse “love” is rooted in a greed for control and resources – a greed that eventually leads to conquest, domestication, and exploitation of the land.
This desire to dominate and tame the earth and its beings is nothing new. In fact, it has been stitched into the fabric of American society since the inception of American democracy, as illustrated by the defining philosophy of the Founding Fathers.
The Founding Fathers were students of the Enlightenment Age. Enlightenment philosophy ultimately exacerbated eugenics and race-based injustice. Even John Locke, the figure of Enlightenment liberalism, adhered to this unjust mode of thinking. Scholars such as Robert Bernasconi and Anika Maaza Mann, in their article “The Contradictions of Racism,” and Domenico Losurdo, in Liberalism: A Counter-History, argue that Locke hypocritically justified the practice of slave-holding and the theft of wilderness from Native Americans whilst promoting liberal values of “natural rights.”
Locke himself, in his “Second Treatise of Civil Government,” states that “God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated.” Through the diction of “men in common,” Locke seems to imply that the world is to be shared between all men equally. However, this initial appearance is immediately countered by the “but.” This “but” forms the loophole that allows justification of slavery within Locke’s liberalism. Indeed, Locke goes on to assume the anthropocentric view that the land was meant for human “conveniences” and “cultivation” which not only promotes a hierarchical relationship with the land, but also implies that the means to that cultivation – not always “remaining common” (i.e. enslavement of other humans) – are justified.
The Founding Fathers, adhering to agrarian values of many colonists, adopted this excessively scientific and hierarchical mindset with nature. Jefferson, for one, believed in an agrarian republic. Indeed, this was the setting of many colonies: plots that were once wilderness were domesticated into plantations for the benefit of none other than the colonists. Deforestation for this farm use had major climate impacts and set the precedent that wilderness is a force to be tamed for human use.
James Madison was a lonely environmentalist in this era (like Adams was a lone abolitionist) and has been labeled “the forgotten father of American environmentalism” by historian Andrea Wulf. According to Wulf, Madison criticized his fellow Americans for exploiting natural resources and razing the forests. Madison’s criticism only further affirms the unjust environmental attitudes that filled American society in its founding days.
The thread of socio-environmental injustice sown during that time strings through American history. A century after the time of the Founding Fathers, Manifest Destiny – the belief that European Americans, due to their superiority, were destined to conquer the entire continental United States – was the popular belief. Manifest Destiny not only lead to more destruction of wilderness in the West, but also left a trail of social injustice behind the pioneers’ covered wagons. Various tribes of Native Americans were forced to leave their homelands and tens of thousands died of disease and starvation during this migration on what became known as the “Trail of Tears.”
Historical injustices have contemporary implications. For instance, our dark past of slavery has plagued this country with a history of institutionalized racism that manifests today in the form of police brutality, socioeconomic disadvantages, and racial discrimination. And the same attitude of superiority that colonists, including the Founding Fathers, took towards the slaves and Native Americans, is the same that many Americans today take towards minority groups – whether it be illegal immigrants or refugees.
This same unjust hierarchical mindset has also left a legacy of environmental injustice. The roots and history of the United States have produced an American patriot who does not respect or love the earth, but instead sees the earth as a wild “other” whose mere presence demands domestication and has potential for exploitation. When politicians choose to deny the earth’s reality and give public lands over to private corporations who seek to destroy the wilderness and harness its power for human consumption, they are adhering to the hierarchical relationship established by the society of the colonial United States.
Such a mindset, while being inherently American in its history, goes against all that America was idealized to stand for. American democratic philosophy stands in opposition to social injustice – the Constitution itself stating that “all men are created equal” – and environmental sustainability plays a key role in the protection of all people’s right to life and the pursuit of happiness. If we truly want to be patriotic, we would acknowledge the wrongdoings of the American past and present and uproot such attitudes so that we can move towards a more just society.
One step towards this goal concerns the history classroom. For the most part, American history classes – from the early years of elementary school – present a glorified version of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is credited with the advent of science, the ascent from the “Dark Ages,” and of course, heightened liberalism that inspired American democracy. I do not deny the truth in those statements. However, it is only a half-truth: the dire consequences and unjust socio-environmental underpinnings of Enlightenment philosophy are continually dismissed – harming the future of American society. If American children cannot find the root of injustices in their country, they will not be able to uproot those same injustices.
Moreover, illuminating the cracks in the United States’ founding philosophy concurrently illuminates the inextricable link between social and environmental justice. Organizations such as Earth Guardians are inspiring models of this approach to activism, noting how the journey towards reversing hateful social attitudes is tied to reversing environmental neglect. As a society, we must concede that environmental justice is a social justice issue and vice versa. We must recognize that a shared imperialist attitude behind both causes gives way to models of hierarchy that jeopardize the democratic ideals of the United States.