Proving the value of the arts under tyranny, Mark Steyn parodies the Obama Administration’s attempted shut down of all public land, including open-air monuments, road-side viewing areas, and even the open ocean:

This land is our land, it sure ain’t your land
From downtown DC to the Lake Mead shoreland
From the Arctic Refuge to the Gulf Stream waters
This land is closed to you and yours

It’s only four stanzas, so read the whole thing and follow all of the embedded links (especially if you normally get your news only from mainstream sources).  Personally, the episode is leading me to reevaluate whether the government’s buying up land for public use is even as benign as I’d thought it was (and I was already skeptical).

Any land we allow the government to purchases or any program we allow it to undertake with the intention of making it available to “all of us” through the political process implicitly becomes wrapped up in politics.  When elected officials make as much abusive use of their leverage as the current administration, “our” shared possessions can become their weapons to manipulate us.