Rights cannot be licensed or taxed, or granted via a government agency however try applying for a concealed carry permit, the jumping thru the hoops process makes the applicant a slave to his/her government agent hence no right, just a privilege..
I forget which book mentioned this. I have this vague idea it was a book by Kenneth Royce, pen name Boston T. Party.
Lets talk about something called allodial title. The root, alod, appears in
Magna Carta. Latin or Anglo-Saxon (I forget) for "set apart".
Whoever wrote the book, it raised a massively interesting point for me.
Gentle reader, do you pay property taxes? Do you know we can trace the idea of property taxes to the exact SOB who started that ball rolling in English history? William the Conqueror. After killing the King of England, King Harold, formerly the Earl of Wessex, at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror claimed every square inch of dirt in England as his
personal property.
He gave a good bit of that land to his French cronies. You see, entire swathes of the English nobility died at the Battle of Hastings; so, there was a lot of land with no lords. William had to fill those vacancies. But, William kept a hook. He "granted" (since he was the "owner") land "rights" to his cronies. That is to say, he told his cronies, "OK, I name you Earl of Clarendon. You may use the land
as though you own it. But, I still own it." And, of course, he charged "fees" to those cronies.
The English king prior to Harold, Edward the Confessor, never claimed to own every stitch of dirt in England. Harold made no such claim. English kings, prior to William, while capable of some really startling brutality, never claimed to personally own every stitch of land in the country. That was Williams angle. If he "owned" all the land, he could charge "fees" against the people using the land.
Now, lets talk about allodial tile. Earlier, I mentioned that
alod means "set apart". Set apart from what? The tax scheme.
According to whichever book piqued my intense interest, there are parcels of property in England that
cannot be taxed. The owners own them outright, totally, and completely. No hook. Apparently, some few scraps of land in Texas fell through the cracks during the revolution (Davy Crockett and Sam Houston), and are not subject to property tax, either. And, (this is
very interesting) in Nevada in the last few years the state government has been offering allodial title to land. You have to pay some huge property tax up front--years worth of property tax--but then you get full, complete ownership of the ground--and no more taxes.
Yep, the whole scheme is premised on the idea that government somehow has an actual ownership interest in the land under our homes. Even though we worked and worked and worked to earn the purchase price, not the government.
Now, just a few questions to prompt thought:
Exactly what was the rational basis for William the Conqueror's claim to own all the land in England? Does it not sound like, "I got the swords, so I own it. Anybody want to dispute it?"
Do we not all have a right to own the things we own? Where does the government get its "right" to partly own the land our home is built on? Government never paid for it. Government is not part-owner of my home. So, where does government get the right to charge me a fee against the dirt? Much less the structure (home) built on it. I've never seen a government agent swinging a hammer to knock together a house.
What is the difference between government's claim today to have the legitimate power to tax your property and William's claim that he owned all the dirt in England? No, really. I am asking a serious question. What is the difference in underlying rationale? "We gots the force. You shut up and pay."
The 9th Amendment guarantees rights not enumerated. Property rights and economic rights (the right to use your earnings to buy stuff--including property) are not enumerated. But, that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Just more rights we need to wrest from government. More rights we shouldn't have to even ask for, much less fight for.
