America is in the middle of a rural land grab. Just last year, it was revealed that Bill Gates had acquired almost 270,000 acres of American farmland. Chinese companies and investors reportedly own 380,000 acres. It is estimated that investment firms own 1,650,000 acres.

Millionaires and billionaires are swarming to buy up rural land as stories about food insecurity and potential social breakdown increase. Also, following the Covid-19 lockdowns, laptop workers are dispersing across flyover country, disrupting rural real estate markets in a way Peter Thiel compares to the railroad.

Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the rural action before it’s too late. A deep yearning for a sense of agency and sovereignty, situated within a natural human way of living, is rising in response to the nagging feeling that such a life may not be attainable for future generations. That’s driving the “farmsteading” trend.

There is massive market demand for real estate projects that connect with this emerging segment. But be forewarned.

We Try a Fraction of Bill Gates’ Buy, Media Melts Down

Earlier this year, I announced leading a joint venture between New Founding and the Appalachian real estate developer RidgeRunner to start what you might call a charter community: developments explicitly anchored in the traditional American way of life, appealing to innate aspirations for leaving a legacy for family, building thick faith-based communities and having a shot at a more self-determined future.

We are starting by buying small-town holdings in rural Appalachia — commercial buildings, houses, and raw land — revitalizing them, and very intentionally marketing them to people who I call “Pioneer Americans,” those dissatisfied with the standard-issue modern lifestyle and looking for a new frontier. Partnering with the leading natives of these regions who’ve stewarded their deep folkways against the onrush of globalism, they can build communities that provide a hopeful alternative lifestyle in 21st century America.

The mere announcement of our vision sparked hysterical meltdowns on the left. RidgeRunner’s modest seven-figure investments became international news as The Guardian breathlessly slandered us as seeking to build a “white nationalist haven” (before quickly revising to “Christian nationalist,” given the lack of any basis for the original claim). MSN followed up with an equally histrionic story. We also made the regime-aligned news aggregator DrudgeReport. Last month, The New York Times profiled the project in a more balanced piece that made the Sunday edition’s front page. In the aftermath Nashville politicians panicked about how “Nashville is being targeted by these zealots.”

Economic ‘Progress’ Only On the Left’s Destructive Terms

Needless to say, the left is perfectly happy for Gates, BlackRock, and foreign investors to gobble up the American heartland, and these massive market moves go almost unnoticed. In fact, the left hopes that when the dust settles, responsible (i.e., World Economic Forum-approved) actors will dominate and thus bring social progress to the most backward and obstinate corners of the country.

Handmaidens of the managerial state like McKinsey and Brookings watch these trends clearly, and give very particular guidance about how this rural revitalization process should proceed. They see a unique opportunity to terraform all their least favorite parts of American society away. Thus, they welcome big box development that brings the crushing homogeneity of global capitalism to hidden gems across the country.

The left makes an extortionary ultimatum to heartland America: do it under our terms, or you cannot have economic revitalization. They tell us that our small Appalachian towns—which have suffered from economic distress and brain drain for 70 years—will never progress unless they become little Ashevilles replete with pride festivals, homeless encampments, and marijuana shops.

The Big Sort Can Revitalize Federalism

But, if channeled well, emerging cultural dynamics can prove the left wrong. You’ve probably heard of the “Big Sort”: the trend where Americans are increasingly moving to states that match their politics. Red states are getting redder, and blue states are getting bluer. Since 2020, millions of Americans have made this move and reportedly many more still intend to move. They cite politics and cultural trends as their top reasons.

The Big Sort reinvigorates federalism: although America remains divided at the federal level, states have a higher degree of internal political consensus. That means states can take decisive action while the federal government remains gridlocked. This means there will be spaces where the left is not politically and culturally hegemonic, where there can be control groups that provide comparisons to the left’s increasingly insane social experimentation.

There’s something more tectonic than the Big Sort at work. Many conservative Americans want to reconnect with, and transmit to the next generation, a genuine American way of life. Think of the mythic Americans who defined so much of our national identity: the frontiersman, the longhunter, the yeoman farmer, the circuit rider, the ridgerunner, the goldminer, and the railroad titan. Figures like these built our nation, driven to undertake great adventures and risks for the chance of making a legacy for themselves and their families.

The New Frontier Americans

A small but growing (and disproportionately impressive) number of Americans is listening to this siren call. Call them the Frontier Americans.

Frontier Americans are more religious (specifically, Christian) than the average American. They are more likely to be married and to have children. They are significantly “higher agency” in their choices. They are much more likely to send their children to Christian schools, or homeschool. They are much more likely to own businesses or, if they work remotely, have side hustles or hobby farms. Frontier Americans come from a wide array of income brackets but share an inherent burning desire for self-determination in their commercial and civic life.

Yes, Frontier Americans reliably despise the stifling wokeness, urban crime, pronoun brigades, lockdown insanity, high taxes, and many other conditions common in modern “default” America. But that isn’t what drives their wanderlust. The Frontier American is not so much running from as he is running to the promise of adventure and a better life.

The Frontier American is a first mover. He understands that the strongest must go into the wilderness first, and clear out the underbrush to make it possible for others to follow, put down roots and form natural human civic life, where culture arises organically as a result of a group of people, with roughly shared beliefs and way of life, sharing a place over time.

The Frontier American rejects the social atomization, cultural dislocation and international homogenization provided by the standard-issue modern American lifestyle. Frontier Americans aspire to reconnect with the American past to inspire a more hopeful and rooted future.

They hope to achieve a legacy by building estates or businesses that can be handed off to the next generation. They seek sovereignty through personal, familial, or local ownership of space, as well as the means of material and cultural production. They fight for agency by situating themselves in a community where they can exercise meaningful civic and cultural leadership. They desire an integrated life, in which one’s spiritual, civic, cultural, and commercial life overlaps as much as possible. And they long for adventure—to join in and take the laboring oar in projects with an open-ended future.

A Critical Mass in Strategic Locations

If Frontier Americans can gather in particular locations in critical mass, they can accomplish things that would otherwise be impossible. Imagine the effects of having high-end economic activity return to legacy American towns in the heartland. Imagine seeing the aesthetics, cuisine, and local terroir, cultural production, and way of life of small-town Appalachia or the Midwest become an object of national admiration.

Imagine the kinds of new institutions of civic society, schools, colleges, and businesses that could arise from a community centered around this way of life. Imagine how such communities can become laboratories for forward-thinking conservative governance.

Imagine how technological innovation, if oriented toward this way of life, will enable local food production and other forms of self-reliance; ag-tech such as robotic tractors and automation make small-scale local organic farming economically feasible, and micro-nuclear and micro-hydro plants make Bitcoin mining economical. Markets and particular types of demand will emerge that have barely been imagined. The communities built by Frontier Americans will offer the potential of an American right-wing that is culturally productive, assertive, and attractive.  

The left wants to kill this movement in the cradle. They will desperately attempt to pigeonhole it; to smear it as extreme and fringe (an American Redoubt 2.0!); to mock us as a movement of preppers and conspiracy theorists.

It won’t work. This is a mass movement. All the potentiality of the Frontier American has been unleashed in the remote work revolution, and we are in the early days of this transformation. Reportedly 20 million Americans still desire to relocate, and most of those to predominantly rural and conservative areas. Every week I hear of similar projects, and hear from scores of interested households. Our business efforts are simply the dredging of a modest channel within an overwhelming tide.

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Josh Abbotoy is the Executive Director of American Reformer. He is also a Managing Director at New Founding. A seasoned private equity lawyer by background, Josh is the grateful beneficiary of Christian education, having been homeschooled, then earning his B.A. (History) from Union University and an M.A. (Medieval and Byzantine Studies) from the Catholic University of America before earning his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a member of University Park Baptist Church in Houston, TX and splits his time between Texas and the hills of Middle Tennessee.