Berry considers the “peculiarity” of the fact that most of the history of white people in America has involved little to no planning. After the continent was “discovered” by an Italian on his way to India, a series of expansions followed, with little “unity of direction” but considerable avarice.

The Native Americans’ approach was to inhabit places that had previously been lived in, adopting homelands and then remaining in them to develop traditions; they venerated the land. The European settlers did not see their land as a homeland as such, although they saw its agricultural and domestic possibilities.

At the same time, successive governments prevented those who did want to settle where they were from doing so. As the frontiers moved, people were forced to move with them. Colonists who drove off Native peoples were then exploited by subsequent governments and driven out; there was a series of victimizations by newcomers. Mobility, or the possibility of escape, came to symbolize freedom and class.

Berry notes that the evil of public services and availability is not new. When Europeans brought trade goods to America, the struggle to live became easier, and Native peoples became more mobile, but the results were cataclysmic: the culture had to change far more quickly than it should have, as historian Bernard DeVoto has written. Berry notes that what DeVoto complains of—breakdowns of morale and communal integrity—also happened in later white populations once commerce came to dominate and agricultural land became converted into strip mines for profit.

Berry notes that the “mentality of exploitation” is deeply rooted in the American past and that it is important to relate properly to the land in order to escape this cycle. He describes a strip-miner as a “model exploiter” and a farmer as a “model nurturer.” The exploiter wants to be efficient and determine what the land is worth to him at that moment, whereas a nurturer wants to take care of the land in order to enable it to thrive for years to come.

Exploiters always abuse and pervert nature, changing the character of a people. Berry complains about a recent statement by the secretary of agriculture: “food is a weapon.” Berry describes this as a cultural catastrophe: food should be connected to nature, love, and community. Food as a weapon connects to policies that destroy farmland by overusing them, emphasizing production and low cost at the expense of land and communities.

“Corporate totalitarianism” of this sort will not only exhaust farmland, it will also disrupt society and limit the fertility of the soil. Berry argues that land should never be destroyed for any reason, certainly not capitalist gain. In Kansas, Texas, Iowa, and the Dakotas, the destructive effects of overfarming can already be seen on the land.

Exploiters seek to divide and conquer, encouraging people to buy what they do not need for more than it is worth and dissolving the impulses in people that make them want to form communities. Our surroundings should reflect our inward life: if we have destructive comforts, amusements, and livelihoods, these will be reflected in the world around us.

Berry notes that the language of the exploiter is often couched in terms of “saving” people, such as by enabling farmhands to escape back-breaking work with machinery. But he asks whether we have a right to escape work and if by trying to do so, we are separating ourselves from the land we live on.

The government argues that we can pursue affluence, comfort, leisure, and mobility forever by simply developing more and more efficient methods of production and buying more and more...