One of my earliest “how things work” memories were of my parents having their house built. They did this when I was five and six. I think it took a year and a half, but it might have been longer, because construction used to take a long time, being done in a mostly artisanal way.
Anyway, before that, and I don’t know how long — but it’s tied in my brain with the idea of “how large is Portugal” being the size of my thumb nail at five, in our home globe — they bought land to build on. And I got to look at the deed of sale. My parents had been saving to buy land for a long time so they were very proud of themselves, and one or the other of them — probably dad, the geek — unrolled the deed for me to read.
I no longer remember the wording, but I retain the sense that the deed said the Portuguese state was graciously allowing my parents to hold this land, after which came the transaction certification that they’d bought the land from so and so for x amount.
At the time I remember this hit me as odd. What did the state have to do with the sale of a small parcel of land. It stayed with me enough that much later, when I was doing research in the city library (it’s not a lending library. More like an archive of important documents) I looked up old deeds of sale, and found that they’d just replaced the king’s name with the name of the Portuguese Republic. Because the conceit was that the entire country was the fiefdom of the king, and he was letting people hold portions of it. This was simply transferred to the state owning the country, etc.
Note I’m not a lawyer and my interest in Portuguese jurisprudence is less than zero. But at the time this was my understanding, and I bet it’s the understanding of many people there. Many people all over Europe, really.
As in, monarchy didn’t get vanquished so much as replaced with a collective, but he idea that the state has all power RIGHTLY over individuals remains. Because it’s always been like that and it will always be like that. It’s like when my school in an excess of revolutionary fervor in the seventies replaced the director with a directive committee. It just transferred authority to a group, it didn’t give the teachers — or heaven forfend — the students any real purchase or right on the power.
I was reading recently — and I’m sorry, I’ve slept since and I’ve been ill which means my memory is a mush so I can’t remember who except it was someone I admire — someone saying that the problem with what happened to the American state starting with Woodrow Wilson is that we replaced the idea of inalienable rights descending to us from “nature and nature’s G-d” with the state. With holding the rights the state lets us have and that’s it.
And since then the wheels have been if not off, turning very weirdly in this our American project. Because we more or less half-gave-up our project for the idea that Europe had the right idea for the future. Look, guys I don’t understand it any more than you do, but you can see it’s true. You can also see the idea was loose in the world when Heinlein makes some noise in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress about our constitution being suitable for an agrarian republic but the industrial era needing something else. Pfui. (And I don’t think he was advocating it. Merely playing with it. He was, at heart, a constitutionalist.)
Because that’s not who or what we are. This was the illusion that everything would work better if centrally administered, which was brought to full flower in communism which is why it called itself “scientific.”
Because making widgets was easier mass produced and in a central location, it was assume everything was better mass produced, centralized and optimized for the most people, instead of tailored to the individual.
This as we know now is wrong. our idea of inalienable individual rights was indeed ahead of its time, as meshes well with the idea that economic decisions are best if made at the individual level. That is most efficient and in the end better for everyone. In fact, it is the only way to keep society from devolving into a dystopian nightmare, because the more the government controls, the more it wants to control and the more it entices the type of people who want to control others completely.
On this 250th anniversary it’s time to turn back to our declaration of independence and our constitution, which are the documents most appropriate to governing our people and making us strong and prosperous.
Now, is our way best for Europe? I don’t know. I mean, instinctively I want to say yes, and they would benefit greatly from adopting it.
Which is true. Except that… Cultures are stubborn things, and I don’t think the Europeans as they are now can understand or support our ideas of government. They’ve tried over a hundred years, and what a muck they’ve made of it.
At this point I’d say let’s each of us return to own ideas of government. We can choose to be free and they, if they are lucky, can choose to be owned by “benevolently” neglectful kings more intent on their pleasures than on controlling everyone and everything. Heaven knows, just having a monarch who views the kingdom as possessions not to be abused would be a vast improvement for them.
As for us, ladies, gentlemen and gentle-barbarians, let’s get back to our understanding of things and pare government down as close to the level of the individual as possible and keep the Federal government ONLY for essential duties ascribed to it by the constitution!
It’s time.
According To Hoyt 
In Hernando De Soto’s book about economics, he points out how difficult it was to actually buy land in Peru to build a house on, so that you owned the house and land in fee simple. The state owns it, unless it doesn’t. So people just build, and hope the state ignores them. The US* generally has fee simple ownership, especially outside of municipalities. You buy it, it is your, you use it the way you want unless you cause active harm to someone else. You can pass the land and house to your heirs, sell it without government permission, and so on. And we take it for granted that if you have sufficient funds, you can buy a house where you want. Heck, the US and state governments literally gave away land to settlers for a hundred years or so!**
The US is strange. We got some of that from England/Scotland, but the rest? We be weird.
*I know, someone is going to scream about property taxes and the state claiming your fee simple property if you don’t pay your taxes. I’m focusing on the big cultural and philosophical picture.
**Terms and conditions applied, see homestead and desert land acts for details.
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In Hawaii, at least when I lived there many years ago, non-Native Hawaiians could not own land. If you bought a house, you owned the building, but you got a 99 year (IIRC) lease on the land it sat on.
Of course that proves Sarah’s point; Hawaiian culture is not really US culture, despite the overlay or our national laws over their culture starting in the late 19th century. On the surface there are similarities, but if you dig down there is a different mind set.
Not a criticism, simply an acknowledgement of reality, even though I prefer the Mid-West American culture and attitudes to the more laid back Aloha culture. They do them, and I do me.
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They are of the opinion that overrides Bruen. As of Jan, SCOTUS had not ruled.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/supreme-court-appears-sympathetic-to-gun-owners-challenge-to-hawaii-law/
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I lived there in the 80s/90s. Long before Heller, Bruen etc. They were not as bad as they are today, but still a major PITA.
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There are both fee simple and leasehold property listings in Hawaii, I think depending on everything back to who (Hawaiian native or foreigner) held legal monarch-granted title under the Hawaiian monarchy.
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My parents sold their home in Maui County last year, and no, they did not own the land.
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The same applies to housing on indian reservations, at least here in Washington state.
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Amen!
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Uggh, that old devil WW (as in WWI and WWII?) <spit!>. Teddy Roosevelt, whom I otherwise mostly admire, inflicted that evil SOB on us by running as a third party candidate and splitting the vote for Taft. I’ve never looked to see what TR’s beef with Taft was, but, like many things resulting in political catastrophe, I’m sure it stemmed from a personal resentment. Just like H. Ross Perot saddled us with Clinton because he hated the Bush clan, and, most obnoxiously John McCain leaving us with Obamacare after campaigning on repealing it, then going back on his word to his constituents, theatrically casting the deciding no vote on repeal and stomping out of the room because Trump had insulted his daughter (who had insulted Trump first).
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I should ask my sisters about land ownership in Holland some day; both are homeowners (in very rural areas).
Re “the state has all power RIGHTLY over individuals” — definitely. The term “subject” (as opposed to “citizen”) shows that. It also appears in other ways. For example, in Dutch reporting when talking about a possible tax cut, the wording speaks of cutting the Treasury as opposed to having the people keep more of what is theirs.
You can also see it in the fact that limited government just isn’t a thing. In England Parliament can do what it wants, with no Constitution to say otherwise. And in Holland there is a Constitution that might seem to limit the government — until you get to article 120 which says that no court has any authority to pass judgment on the constitutionality of any law or treaty. In other words, those limits you thought you saw? They aren’t enforceable.
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We just spent 20 years and way too much in blood and treasure proving that American values and culture does not transfer well to low trust tribal societies.
We need to put a stake through the heart of “your break it you bought it” nonsense and the Nation Building fans in places like the Ivy Leagues and State Dept. (at least they are for it when a D is in the White House) and go back to Punitive Expeditions when needed.
Y’all foreigners do you, and while we are happy to give advice on how to limit government (which we should follow more here at home), DO NOT make us have to get involved. You really do not want our attention.
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Precisely this.
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Your words to God’s eyes (since written). Plus, whomever (currently President Trump), is in charge of the US.
First, they get a stern “Stop. It.”
Second, they get a “We. Meant. It.” Smack down (ex: Iran).
Third, a stern “Behave. Do. Not. Make. Us. Come. Back.” We bring everyone home.
Regarding all the bases around the world? I know why, or at least the reasons that PTB say, we are there (don’t know if I agree, but not my call). I think we should pull out, take or destroy all the goodies that can’t be taken (not scorched earth, that is not fair to the land itself). If local PTB want us to stay, and keep the bases, they need to pay us to be there.
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There is an idea of becoming beholden to the rest of the world in terms of mercenary contracts.
I do not care for this idea.
Basically, I do not want an obligation to other countries that constrains American freedom of action.
I want us to be free to reimagine, or to understand again how we feel about foreign policy, inside of the same basic framework.
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Agree. Absolutely not. The US should not become the world’s mercenaries. Nope.
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Indeed. I wonder if in some cases, we have been there at some of those overseas bases for too darned long.
My father was stationed in South Korea when I was born. So, four decades later – I’m doing a year in Korea. I lived just down the hill at Yongsan from Camp Coiner, which was the in-processing camp for new troops, way back then. Dad passed through Camp Coiner when it was just tents with a barbed wire barricade; when I was there, it was ancient Quonset huts layered in so much insulation foam they looked like enormous Twix bars and had kerosene heaters so antique that they had to have special briefings for the barracks managers…
Anyway – I did a tour in Japan, early on – my daughter was born there. 20 years later, my daughter is doing a tour in Japan. (Different base, though.) But still … three generations of American troops doing tours of duty in Japan and Korea? When did post-WWII peacekeeping turn into a multi-generational commitment?
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We’re in Japan because after WW2, Japan agreed to get rid of its military in exchange for US security guarantees. The original understanding of the constitutional restrictions on Japan’s military was that *no* military was allowed. The JSDF only exists because the Korean War forced the US to pull troops out of Japan, and it was decided that keeping the Japanese involved in their own defense was an overall positive.
Recent conservative governments have been laying the groundwork for what will (hopefully) eventually result in a full revocation of that part of their constitution. In the meantime, you can blame our troop presence there on Mac.
On the other hand, Japan is one of the few countries that I think nearly everyone would agree we should station troops there. The Japanese seem to genuinely like us, appreciate our troop presence, are next door to our current biggest geo-political headache, and seem to take their military seriously (unlike big chunks of Europe).
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Your reference was to Justice Clarence Thomas in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
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Thank you. My mind is caught in a novel and I am recovering from being ill.
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The Gaelic Irish kings took noble titles under the first Elizabeth. O’Brien the King of Thomond became Earl of Thomond e.g., There was much violence later when they found out that they’d actually trade allodial rifle for fee title and the Queen could take their property more or less when she felt like it.
I’m afraid we don’t have allodial title in the US either what with eminent domain etc.,
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The brilliant heresy of the U.S. Constitution was that it established a nation in which the government was the property of the people, where every previous arrangement had the people as property of the government. King, Chancellor, Parliament or Politburo, all exercised variations of Rule By Divine Right.
The Democrats (and their predecessors prior to 1850) have been trying to ‘correct’ that principle ever since.
We are none of us worthy to be gods and rule over others. Election or appointment into the government does not change that. Being in the government does not make anybody a better person, and the siren call of money, power and authority attracts all the worst sorts. The wonder is that there are any decent folks at all in the government.
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Property is basically related to the existence of peace.
Long multi-generation peaces have as a necessary but not on its own sufficent requirement that agriculture supply calories for population.
This winds up tying into land use rights, and also rights around tools. One, you need tool users to have rights to their tools that are not superseded or matched by random outsiders wanting to take or destroy the tools. This is property rights for tools, and customs thereof. Two, limitations on changing work force and decision makers mid crop, while allowing some changing of hands rarer times as needed. This winds up being real estate, and markets for same. Third, movement of crops. IE, sale on a market, and rights and dispute resolutions thereof.
The test case which proves this is the possibility of outside nomads with zero ties to sedentary agricultural locals, coming by and wanting to take or destroy crops or tools.
If someone destroys your property, this is a wrong doing, a cause for a dispute. Dispute resolution runs through customs about courts, or to ‘you and whose army’. (So, it is absurd to expect practices to graft neatly onto an alien culture and an alien population.)
Nation of riflemen is pretty much a fairly even way of doing this stuff.
The basic circumstances of current US politics is a so far unresolved dispute as to, effectively, public takings by PhDs, abusing the customary understandings of academic expertise. Faculty ruled universities can curate themselves to prevent knowledge of Austrian economics, etc., but these ideas can be more widely known to the American public. One manifestation of this dispute is whether black academics on government payroll can sign approvel for government activists to burn down poor black neighborhoods. A second manifestation is whether medical academics have the right to shut down specific economic activities, for a greater good that they are not required to document and subject to outside examination. Third is curation by legal academics of disputes allowed to be pursued within the formal legal system.
It was a fashion to pretend that we could harmonize law and regulation between nations, and that the gain from this is at all worth the cost.
The ceremonial gain was massively outweighed by the possibility of frustrated academics choosing to feel homicidal towards their hosting population.
Repricing the value of academic research lower, and cutting the federal funding for research, is maybe downstream of an adjustment in the peace consensus.
Academic theory largely falls short of predicting American choices, and an answer is to cease expecting it to.
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I think it goes back to the Declaration of Independence. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
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The Europeans don’t get that idea, not at the gut level.
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Yeah, I feel like alot of people in the world spend far too much time clutching their pearls about What People Over There Are Doing. Maybe there’s some sense to it, if you’re stuck next door to Germany, Russia or both (hi Poland!) Or if you’re dealing with someone who has nukes and you consider to be a bad neighbor to the world at large. But the USA’s pretty much always had different foreign powers on the “don’t like em but can do business with em” list. No reason that should change, although who’s on will of course.
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Land ownership in Canada has become more ‘interesting’ lately with the decision that a section of privately owned land in British Columbia could be GIVEN to an Indian tribe (be it noted an extinct Indian tribe, as far as I know) by the BC court.
So now everybody that lives within 12 miles of the Grand River in Ontario, from Port Maitland all the way to Guelph (or probably Fergus, really) is expecting the federal government to offer some sort of damn-fool deal to the Six Nations, this despite the still existing deeds of ownership signed by Chief Joseph Brant himself. My family has one of those for the ancestral farm, on paper, for real.
Be it noted, half the industry in Ontario is sitting within 12 miles of the Grand River, including the cities of Brantford, Guelph, Waterloo (of Research In Motion fame) and Kitchener.
Because of course the British Crown gave the land “12 miles either side of the Grand River from source to mouth” to the Six Nations for their help in the Revolutionary War. How much help they were is debateable, given the rebels won and all. Probably not worth half of Southern Ontario, but the Crown didn’t know where the damn river even was, and cared less.
So then the Indians obviously sold all the land they were given, because Southern Ontario is not the kind of place you want to be living in a deer-hide tent, to put it bluntly. It -sucks- here 9 months out of 12 unless you have a proper house. And then Ontario happened.
But now, because… [because shut up, peasants!] all those legally owned properties might… not be legally owned, kinda-sorta? The business in BC is just ridiculous, the court has decided they can retcon 300-ish years of legal ownership.
And TAXES, my friends. 300 years of taxes, not to put too fine a point on it. “Oh, your family paid a total of $X,XXX,XXX.XX property tax over the last 300 years for this land and you want it back because we decided it isn’t yours and never was? No refunds, peasant.”
Canada is not a serious country. Elbows up, and remember, this is #Trump’s fault.
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Canada can’t be a real place. I refuse to believe it.
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Mainland China provides an even greater example of what you’re describing. In the PRC, you don’t own the land that your residence is built on. You sign a very long-term (at least several decades) lease with the local government. This hasn’t become a problem yet because the practice is new enough that the leases haven’t started expiring. But when they do…
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How is it that Putin is not called Czar Putin? It’s what he is. The Russian people and Europeans, Europeans have never looked fondly at the Russians. They have all traded their monarchs for the state, but the people are the same as always, culture yes. Partially because anyone with any gumption have already left for America.
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Putin puts on a show about following the laws of his country. The law says “Our leader is a president who stands for election,” so he regularly stands for election. At one point the law said, “The president can only serve two consecutive terms.” So at the end of his second term, he didn’t run for reelection. And then after Medvedev served a term as president (with Putin as head of the Duma), Putin once again ran for the office.
There are advantages to not making naked power grabs. It’s understood that Putin has something to do with a surprising number of Russians who have fallen out of upper-story windows. But by maintaining the level of plausible deniability that he does, he can always choose to deescalate things in the future. Making a naked power grab removes that option.
Also, I don’t know whether he has any kids to pass the Tsar’s throne to after he’s done.
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So much to agree with………. Very different cultures and mindsets between pretty much all the rest of the world and the US. And the dems along with every other would be ruler keep on trying to find ways to dismantle what the founders set up. The very idea that the people should rule and have Rights instead of some ruling class, whether king, Parlement or The Party is unbearable to them.
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The American attitude toward Authority might be summed up from an example from the colonial days. In the Colonies, there were vast tracts of tall strong straight trees – such had not existed in Europe for centuries. The best were marked with a broad arrow indicating that they were the King’s property and reserved as masts for the Royal Navy. The American attitude was that if the King wanted masts, he could shoulder an axe and cut them himself.
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And we promptly cut them down and used them for floor boards. Very nice, straight, wide boards
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We needed masts for our frigates too,
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