Modern Era
Wendell Berry
b. 1934 · Localism
Freedom that depends on distant systems is not freedom.
In their words
“The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility.”
Berry's essays on farming, land and household argue that a person who cannot produce or repair anything necessary to life is dependent no matter who governs him. He has attacked industrial agriculture and the consolidation of decision-making in distant institutions, and defended local economies and communities not as nostalgia but as the practical conditions in which self-government can mean anything at all.
Why it matters for freedom
He argued that a person without land or community is free only to leave, and that real independence is rooted in a place.
Who they stood against
the industrial economy and the assumption that a place is only raw material