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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> The framers would, I would say, have held freedom in such high regard that 
> if it came to a choice of conditions of life today or freedom with the
> conditions of life in the eighteeth century, they would readily choose the 
> latter.  Many of us have made the same choice.

Ah, now that gets us to our continued common interest. I see homesteaders 
at least partly defined, as you say, as "people with a passion for 
freedom." One of my homestead-books-to-be-written has that word, freedom, 
in its working title.

Homesteading is but a partial answer to the quest for maximal personal 
freedom. In even the most rural locale we are subject to many controls on 
our freedom: zoning laws, subdivision laws, building codes, well and septic 
laws, environmental laws, taxes, and more. The Amish, who live simply and 
mostly without machines, having thereby removed themselves from the tyranny 
of purchased energy, transporting themselves with horse and buggy, are 
subject to our many restrictive laws and to our many social conditions. It 
is instructive to consider one of their dilemmas: the need for acreage to 
preserve their way of life. Dying fathers typically split the family farm 
amongst male heirs. This reduces individual farm acreage, each generation 
incrementally exacerbating the challenge of insufficient acreage to support 
a family under their self-imposed conditions and now fully exposed to 
modern land prices and laws and the challenge not only of affordability, 
one of modern life's greatest restrictions, but of transportation to the 
new location. I was once consulted by a man who was helping a large group 
of such people find suitable acreage. Unable to find a large piece of 
affordable land in the U.S., they found their best compromise in South 
America. I don't recall which country. I wonder if they found greater 
freedom other than that which large acreage provides.