LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ARE FOR MOCKING.

Last month, we noted and noted Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan noting the University of Washington backing down from their attempt to deplorable-shame a professor who injected a political economy lesson into his alternative land acknowledgement.  “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”  Undermining the Excessively Earnest People with mockery is the only way to go.  "I wonder if any academic institutions in Bethlehem have a land acknowledgement that refers to the house and lineage of David."

Now comes Free Expression columnist Kyle Smith with his own scorn of the Excessively Earnest.

I was at an off-Broadway show the other day that began with a land acknowledgment. But this wasn’t the usual po-faced expression of somber white guilt. Instead it was a joke, a goof on the whole idea of land acknowledgments. It was the second downtown show I’ve seen that gave a much-deserved pantsing to land acknowledgments. After all, the internal logic of these things doesn’t even scan. It’s as if a robber announced, “I took your jewelry and feel bad about it, but no way am I giving it back.” Either sign over the deed or shut up.

The land-acknowledgment fad, which has already lasted longer than such previous viral eccentricities as streaking and pole-sitting, may be nearing its end. Even the emphatically woke precincts are turning on it.

It gets better, e.g. "Anguished white liberals tend to get society to rearrange itself to manage their neuroses regardless of what others think."

Fittingly, as one would hope of a columnist affiliated with The Wall Street Journal, there's another political economy lesson.

So we could replace land acknowledgments with invisible-hand acknowledgments. People fulfill each other’s needs simply by looking after their own: one gets a building, the other gets profits. Isn’t that spirit of working together a nicer thing to contemplate than the history of conquest?

That isn't as on point as Washington's Professor Reges, as it's possible to thank one's lenders with an equipment trust plate or naming rights.  All the same, calling attention to rules of ownership and contract, which is to say, building blocks of civilization, merits encouragement as too often such concepts are either taken for granted or not well understood by those anguished white liberals.

Cold Spring Shops headquarters is on land that was in Wisconsin Territory before Illinois became a state. We recognize the labor applied by those settlers marking the trails that contemporary Illinoisans use to visit Lake Geneva, the Dells, and Door County, and to watch their teams get owned in Milwaukee and Green Bay.