“The earth belongs always to the living generation.”: do we “own” the earth while we are here, then pass it on to the next generation to do with as it pleases?

Can a Generation Own the Earth?

by Bruce Frohnen

“The earth belongs always to the living generation.”

These are not Thomas Jefferson’s most famous words, but they are quite famous among students of politics. They have been used for generations to justify radical political change. And, like the soaring rhetoric of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, these Jeffersonian words have gained him great renown as a friend to political progress and enemy to “the dead hand of the past.”

Jefferson, of course, was the president who praised the French Revolution, even apologizing for its murderous Reign of Terror. He was the public opponent of slavery, whose abstract condemnations were counterbalanced by his actions as a master who often sold his charges literally “down the river.” (It was George Washington who quietly freed his slaves through an iron-clad last will and testament.) Jefferson was the one who stated that “in every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty” and sought to institute a “wall of separation between church and state” to be found nowhere in our Constitutional documents or the mainstream tradition of practice in the colonies or young republic.

Still, Jefferson has his fans, including among conservatives. Conservative Jeffersonians can point out that he constantly argued for small, limited government, especially at the federal level. And he both praised and sought to defend the prerogatives of state and local government.

What, then, should we make of Jefferson, and of his grand pronouncements regarding politics and public life?

One possibility is that he was wont to let his pen run away with him; he may simply have written things that sounded good, but did not really fit with life’s practical realities, or with his deeper understanding of human nature and the social order. This might excuse his sometimes bloodthirsty comments, such as that the tree of liberty must be “refreshed” with the blood of patriots and tyrants. As to the hypocrisy regarding slavery, that can only be explained by pointing to the human failings of a man who loved books, wine, and other luxuries and was under no social pressure to put his anti-slavery principles into action.

But what should we make of a statement, like that regarding each generation “owning” the earth, that seems purely political, that has public meaning and purpose seemingly unconnected with apologies for specific acts or events? Do we “own” the earth while we are here, then pass it on to the next generation to do with as it pleases? Why, and how so?

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