LEGATO...

( In addition to my article which is taken from my book Earth Restored, 2002; that's how long ago I warned people of a plan to overcome private property rights, PLEASE watch the full video below of how the city of Vero Beach, FL, overcame this anti-American agenda ).  In his booklet,  The Decline of Property Rights and Freedom in America , Dr. Michael S. Coffman, president of Environmental Perspectives, details the original intent of the Founding Fathers, who saw our God-given right to own land as one of the foundational elements to freedom. Coffman also provides an overview of the systematic erosion of the right to private property in America, which has come at the hands of government interference and its usurpation of individual rights. I strongly recommend the reader get a copy of his booklet. The gist of Coffman’s thesis is that America is presently witnessing a move toward a “new feudalism.” Complete centralized control over most of this nation’s landscape will h...

Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900) was a devout Trinitarian and Congregationalist. Ministers and theologians were among his closest friends throughout his life. For years a student of Thomas Cole, he left his tutelage in 1846 and established his own studio in Hartford where he heard the sermons of Horace Bushnell at North Congregational Church. In those years Church would have been exposed to the ideas of the young Christian Romantic minister that had just published Discourses on Christian Nurture . I will comment briefly on only one of his paintings. Niagara (1857) is a monumental piece both in physical size and meaning. Painted at a time when America was transitioning from an agrarian to an industrialized economy, and when a new sense of nationalism was in search of an identifiable cultural icon, the significance of Church’s picture of Niagara Falls found a ready audience. While Niagara Falls had been painted many times, even by his mentor Cole, Church brought a fresh a...