# Quote — Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe

> Property has always been the central consideration of the United States government, but it has become even more so over time. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to provide just one obvious, and in some ways, silly, example (silly because all of the terms are seemingly obvious, yet in fact nearly impossible to adequately define) and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, the inalienable right with which men [sic] are self-evidently endowed by their Creator, and which may not be abridged by the State, changed from "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," to life, liberty, and property. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during the KKK's maiden reign of terror, ostensibly to protect the rights of blacks from racist state governments, has been used far more often to protect the rights to property: Of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen dealt with the rights of blacks, while two hundred and eighty-eight dealt with the rights of corporations.

- Author: [Derrick Jensen](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen.md)
- Book: [The Culture of Make Believe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe.md)
- Page: 92
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Derrick_Jensen#The_Culture_of_Make_Believe_(2003)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe/property-has-always

## More from this book

> To believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity.

p. 57 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe/to-believe-christianity.md)

> Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.

p. 60 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe/slavery-was-a-central.md)

> Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state--where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised--to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized. Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remain underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

p. 106 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe/several-times-i-have.md)