HAMPDEN, Maine — Even with Hampden Academy hosting Brewer in a big football face off just down the road — on a Friday night no less — almost 70 people attended a private property rights presentation at the Hampden Municipal Building.
The big draw was Dr. Michael Coffman, a longtime Bangor resident and president of Environmental Perspectives and executive director of Sovereignty International, talk about landowner rights, the environmental agenda, and a growing concern over the intrusion of international and federal regulations into personal property and land ownership.
“The foundation of capitalism is private property rights, and you are now entertaining the use of a comprehensive plan that takes away those rights,” said Coffman, who has written four books, the most recent of which is titled “Rescuing a Broken America.”
While the main issue Coffman addressed was the importance of private land ownership and guarding the ceding of personal control and rights to local, state and federal governing bodies, he also talked about an increasing environmental lobbying and lawmaking effort based on the 18th century theories of Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
“There are two opposing philosophies in America,” said Coffman, a former college professor and manager of Champion International, a leading forest and paper products company. “Those by [17th century English philosopher] John Locke, which our Constitution is based on and are rooted in capitalism, and Rousseau’s, which resemble communism.”
Coffman said Locke’s political model stresses individual, God-given, unalienable rights with powers that are designed to fetter government while Rousseau’s stress government, primarily federal, followed by state, followed by local with individuals under all three.
“The Rousseau form of government is what we’ve been heading toward for the last two-and-a-half to three years,” Coffman said. “We’re already seeing this in Europe and we are literally tearing our selves apart in this country because of this system. Something has to be done sooner rather than later folks.”
Coffman blames an environmental/global warming lobby rooted in the United Nations, specifically the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, an organization that originated the Convention on Biodiversity Treaty which Coffman was instrumental in stopping the ratification of by the U.S. Senate in 1994. Ironically, it was former Maine Senator and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell who withdrew it from the Senate calendar for the second and final time.
Coffman sees some slight similarities between the treaty and Hampden’s comprehensive plan.
“I think eventually this plan will be revoked because more and more people are understanding what’s really happening, and if they’re successful in getting some new blood into the town council,” Coffman said. “I don’t think anyone involved in making this comprehensive plan or others like it really understands where they’re taking us. They want to do the right thing for the right reason, but they don’t understand the implications of it at this point in time.”
Hampden’s comprehensive plan, a nearly 300-page document detailing the town’s assets and future zoning possibilities, deals with potential development, reduction of sprawl, land trusts, and conservation easements, among other things.
“How do you protect rural character, which is mentioned in the plan, without telling landowners what they can and cannot do with their land?” Coffman asked. “It amounts to city people telling rural people what they can do.”
Coffman, who said he hasn’t always been so politically active, urged those in attendance to become active by writing one-page summaries of their concerns to city officials, writing letters to the editor in local newspapers, starting petitions to disband planning departments if allowed under town charters, becoming more politically aware and active, and even running for office.
“I used to be about as apolitical as you could get,” he said. “I’ve only been strongly conservative for the last 30 years when I started seeing things that just didn’t make sense.”
And Coffman has a message for those who dismiss him as a fringe, far right, or “black helicopter/conspiracy theorist.”
“What I’d tell someone like that if I had the opportunity to is, you have to be very careful with your facts,” he said. “I always try to get at least two or three different, independent sources before I’ll start talking about it as a fact, and even then I’ll keep doing my research.”