Trump, Public Lands, and Worrying about What Really Matters

No, Yellowstone is not for sale.

Trump has proposed selling off some public lands, and liberals are all atwitter. I do hate it when they put me in the position of almost kinda-sorta defending Trump, as I’m a never Trumper and have previously written that his administration is genuinely fascist (not just fascist-like, but literally fascist). But in addition to being a never Trumper, because I oppose fascists, bullshitters, and bullies, I’m a political scientist, even though I don’t get paid to do that anymore. As a political scientist, I try to look at political issues with as much objectivity as possible, and - unlike some political scientists I’ve known - not mistaking a liberal or Democratic perspective for a political science perspective itself.

As a political scientist with a classically liberal perspective, I don’t think there’s anything inherently sacred about public land. There’s no foundational philosophical principle supporting the idea that public land is inherently more important, valuable, or meaningful than private land. Private property, in general (not just land, but including it), is the mainspring of economic growth that has made the modern world so much wealthier and safer than the ancient world, not public land. Public land is, as a general rule, a luxury.

(Public lands, by the way, are not the same as the commons, although the concept is often applied and there is overlap. A traditional commons, whether a common fishing area, grazing area, or irrigation system - read Elinor Ostrom on this - is not a luxury, but the material foundation of a community’s subsistence. The community carefully manages it through collectively evolved, commonly understood and enforced, rules, and it is not open for use by people outside the community. Try to start a farm in a national forest, and you’ll quickly find out it’s not that kind of commons.)

And as the state itself is far more difficult to justify than most people realize, nearly all of its possible actions are inherently suspect, and that includes holding public lands. But, I think any reasonable person must conclude that holding public lands - lands generally open to the public, not the king’s private reserve - is among the least harmful things the state can do.

So while I don’t find it worthwhile to object to the state holding public lands, I also don’t revere the concept of public lands that much, and personally tend to shrug my shoulders at the thought of the federal government selling off some parcels of the 630 million acres - 1/3 of the United States territory - that it owns.

But it’s important also to recognize that social values, while not themselves facts, do exist and so their existences are facts that social scientists must take account of. And the fact is that a large proportion of the public perceives the concept of public land as sacred, and they perceive at least certain public lands as themselves sacred.

But even putting those two social facts together, it doesn’t mean every parcel of what’s currently public land is necessarily considered, or ought to be considered, sacred and inviolable, that it must as a matter of all that is good and holy remain public forever and ever, amen.

Here’s the quick and dirty, but generally true, story of how the public lands in the U.S. came about. The U.S. brutally and wholly unethically stole the lands from the people who had lived there for thousands and thousands of years, and merely for initial management purposes took them under government ownership (so the very origin of most of our public lands is illegitimate). Then the government desired to parcel them out for private ownership - it did not initially contemplate permanent government ownership of vast tracts of lands. Then white people discovered Yellowstone, and decided that it, at least, was so special that it ought to be protected and kept accessible to the public. Then we decided some other places were similarly special. Then we decided that some of the forests were of such great value for timber that they ought to be controlled by the federal government rather than privatized (which makes no sense at all, but this was the progressive era, and progressives are ignorant of economic sense). Then there were some leftover lands that weren’t (at that time, at least) seen as special enough to be made into national parks or monuments, usually not forested enough to be seen as commercially valuable for timber, and not (at the time, at least) desirable enough to private individuals to claim for homesteading purposes - those generally got folded into the Bureau of Land Management, the agency for leftover lands.

And somehow all of those lands came to be seen as sacred in their public aspect.

I call bullshit. Certainly some of those lands were more special than originally recognized, including for their ancient history of human occupation, as well as their scenic beauty or ecological value, and so we continue to have presidents declaring national monuments. Set aside the political debates about whether this or that parcel should be given national monument status, or whether presidents are making them larger than they properly ought to be; my point is simply that I recognize that some of these forested and leftover lands have more of interest going on than was recognized 150 years ago, so I’m not arguing in general against creating greater protections for some parcels of public land, even now.*

But what is the argument that every single acre of these lands, including the ones preserved primarily for commercial purposes and the lands left over because they had little value a century and a half ago, must remain public forever? I don’t think there is a plausible one.

Rather, the serious question is which lands should be kept public and which ones should be privatized?

Trump has said that public land ought to be privatized so we can build housing on it. If you’re a city dweller, this might sound silly. The homeless or those struggling with high housing costs in your city aren’t likely to migrate to former BLM land in Nevada far from any jobs. And to some degree, that’s a fair position. Our national problem of housing costs will be solved only by cities getting out of the way of residential construction and eliminating rent control, not by selling public lands. (To be honest, I don’t know that Trump understands this, either, or that he’s given it any thought beyond his gut feeling that it’s a politically effective slogan.)

But there are a number of western communities that have high demand for housing and can’t grow outward because they are surrounded by federal land. And some of that federal land around them isn’t of insuperable historical or ecological value. (That said, I do think some of these communities ought to get over themselves and their desire to preserve their historic look and just start encouraging building up, as long as they can’t build out - I’m not pitching these communities as poor beleaguered heroes without any other options. And yet allowing them more land would also help.)

Trump has created a task force to survey America’s public lands and decide which are suitable for privatization. Setting aside that you don’t trust Trump or his people to do this task properly - nor do I - this is in general an appropriate and legitimate thing for a president to do. The problem is that it is in the hands of fools and thieves, not in the thing itself.

But even fools and thieves have some awareness of political limits. I have heard the expression of fear for America’s national parks, such as Yellowstone. And as I so often do these days, I felt a strong urge to say, “Grow up.” Trump’s task force will almost certainly propose to privatize some public lands that opponents have a hard time building a really strong argument for keeping public (which isn’t to say they won’t succeed in blocking privatization), and they very likely will propose privatizing some public lands that stir up very passionate opposition. But with 438 million acres of National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands to choose from, they’re not going to try to sell of America’s crown jewels such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion, etc.

Sure, some radicals on the right will call for that - some serious, some just to tweak the libs - but it’s not going to happen. So don’t let them win by successfully tweaking you. Just laugh and shake your head.

And put your energy to what really matters. The Trump administration is fascist. And what it’s doing to immigrants, and what it’s threatening to do to naturalized citizens, and how it’s threatening to censor the media, these are the real threats. I like having roadless wilderness areas, even if I never get into them myself. But I can’t work up the outrage to protect them that I can to protect humans being abused by our government.

So focus. Don’t stress yourself out fretting that Trump might sell off Yellowstone or any other major national park. It’s just not going to happen. And while he might - if the courts agree he has the authority, still an open question - roll back some national monuments, in part or in whole, and might allow timber sales in currently roadless areas, and might sell off parcels of public land near western towns, all of that pales in comparison to the damage he’s doing to individual humans and to our constitutional structure.

I would trade all public lands to avoid fascism, if that was the choice. So let’s prioritize our concerns appropriately.


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* But this can’t continue forever. I once had a friend react with considerable emotional distress to the news that the rate of creation of national parks and monuments had slowed down. I noted that this was inevitable. Because there is a finite amount of public land, the rate of creation of new national parks or monuments on those lands must eventually fall to zero, either because we’ve decided that none of the remainder is deserving of that status or because all of it has become protected.