Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes
What we call real estate--the solid ground to build a house on--is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.
Essentially whereas many property owners have paid for their ownership in recent times, almost all real estate, wherever it is, that is privately owned was at some time in the past obtained by force, fraud, deceit, from someone else. In most cases, the owners who were killed, defrauded or otherwise removed from their land, had previously killed, defrauded or otherwise removed owners before them. There is almost no guilt untainted land. This was not just a product of capitalism, but has been a factor in every ism that has governed human society.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864, Writer, The House of Seven Gables
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
“Dear” was an adjective that was used (and still is) in England. It means “expensive”. Like so many activities today, this has existed throughout time. Here, in many of the very early American Colonies (in this case, Virginia), where a few ended up with most of the land while many who fought and bled for it did not.
Use included renting it. What he opposed was simply holding land when whites were driving Indians off their lands because all the unused land outside of the reservation was owned by someone and the asking price was very high. Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
The Diggers were a religious-economic movement that even today would be considered very radical. They advocated the right of the poor to go onto public lands and farm them—thus the name “Diggers.” Beyond their opposition to the private ownership of land to the exclusion of the poor, Winstanley and the Diggers promulgated another very modern doctrine: That the poor should take the responsibility and have the right to determinine how the society should provide for the poor. A version of this became one of the Mottos of the Poverty Program of 1964. See {616966}.
Paine, one of America’s founding fathers and the man most responsible for influencing Americans to revolt, is generally not given much attention in modern times. One of the main reasons was that his philosophy regarding land and land ownership is today considered socialist if not communist. Paine’s other views are mostly Apple pie American, but this is shocking to many Americans.
The people at the upper end of the spectrum of wide inequality do not see most communal problems affecting them. As a result, they often do not participate in the attempts to solve those problems.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
