Property Rights, Home Ownership, and the Foundations of Patriotism: A Libertarian View
In a world where governments increasingly encroach on individual liberties, the timeless principle of property rights stands as the bedrock of true freedom and, by extension, genuine patriotism.
From a libertarian perspective, laws such as “do not steal” are not mere edicts imposed by rulers but are reflections of a natural order that predates any state.
These commandments recognize that individuals possess things — land, tools, homes — that belong to them exclusively, and no one else has the moral authority to seize them.
This idea, enshrined in ancient texts like the Ten Commandments, underscores that property rights are inherent to human existence, not gifts from authority.
The Magna Carta of 1215, often hailed as the cornerstone of human rights, formalized protections against arbitrary seizure by kings or nobles. It declared that no free man could be deprived of his property without due process, setting a precedent for limiting governmental power.
Libertarians argue that this right to own and use property is the guardian of all other rights.
Without secure ownership, freedoms like speech, assembly, and movement become precarious. If the state can confiscate your home or earnings at whim, how can you freely express dissent or pursue happiness?
Protections like constitutional limits are essential to prevent such abuses, ensuring that even unpopular individuals retain their property and liberties.
Property rights empower individuals to build lives independent of coercive collectives, fostering self-reliance and innovation.
Over centuries, two competing philosophies emerged on the source of power in society: one placing people first, with intrinsic rights that governments exist to protect, and the other elevating the state as the origin of rights, which it can grant or revoke.
The libertarian ethos aligns firmly with the former — individuals possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property, as articulated by thinkers like John Locke.
Governments are voluntary associations formed to safeguard these, not overlords dictating terms.
In contrast, statist views, prevalent in monarchies and modern bureaucracies, invert this, allowing authorities to redefine rights based on expediency.
This distinction is crucial in democracies, where “majority rule” is often invoked.
But does a majority have the right to tyrannize minorities or individuals?
History warns against it: majorities have confiscated property, enslaved groups, and suppressed speech under the guise of collective will.
Can democracy justify creating first – and second – class citizens denying some their freedoms?
Libertarians say no — the majority cannot vote away natural rights.
Protections like constitutional limits are essential to prevent such abuses, ensuring that even unpopular individuals retain their property and liberties.
Karl Marx epitomized the anti-property school, declaring in his Communist Manifesto that private property must be abolished for true equality. Socialism, he argued, thrives without individual ownership, vesting control in the state.
Yet this rejection of property rights has led to tyrannies where governments, not people, hold ultimate power, stifling innovation and personal initiative.
Without ownership, there’s little incentive to create or defend.
Enter Victor Davis Hanson and his latest book Carnage and Culture, in which he examines why Western armies have historically dominated, despite numerical or technological disadvantages.
Hanson argues that Western military superiority stems not from geography or resources but from cultural values: dissent, inventiveness, citizenship, and crucially, a property-owning free society.
In such cultures, citizens fight fiercely because they have stakes — homes, lands, businesses — to protect.
Free markets and property rights breed adaptive, motivated soldiers who innovate on the battlefield. Armies from hierarchical, property-denying societies falter, lacking the personal drive of free men defending their own.
Governments are voluntary associations formed to safeguard these, not overlords dictating terms.
This link extends to patriotism: willingness to defend one’s country correlates with having something worth defending.
Over the last 50 years, surveys in the US and Australia show a rising unwillingness to fight for one’s nation, especially among youth – from 20-30% in the 1980s/1990s to 50-70% in the 2020s.
This decline mirrors plummeting home ownership rates among young people.
In Australia, home ownership rates for 25-34-year-olds have dropped from around 60-70% in the 1970s/1980s to 35-45% in the 2020s.
In his seminal work Reflections on the Revolution in France, philosopher Edmund Burke described society not as a temporary agreement among the living alone, but as:
“A partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
Burke viewed this as a profound, ongoing contract or partnership in virtue, science, and civilization — one that imposes duties of preservation and stewardship across time.
This idea emphasizes continuity, gratitude to ancestors, and responsibility toward descendants, forming the foundation for many modern discussions of intergenerational justice.
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Glad to hear someone put this view. It has been forgotten in dumb Australia. I might also add property rights privatise economic gains and losses. The costs of poor economic decisions are borne by the individuals who made them rather than the chaos caused by insolvent states. A lesson we may learn the hard way in the none too distant future.
I believe it is a mistake for Libertarians to claim there is a natural order that predates any state which is enshrined in ancient texts and to use this as a basis for saying No to the majority voting away these claimed natural rights. Such arguments will only work in a democracy if a majority believes in this natural order.
I prefer Hayek’s approach as set out in Law, Legislation and Liberty. Hayek argues human societies, and groups within those societies, have rules about how members of those groups deal with each other (rules of just conduct). Different groups have different rules and these different rules have consequences for whether that group flourishes and survives or decays and disappears. These rules aren’t always known to the members of the group or consciously adopted. They often need to be discovered, articulated and enforced. This is what Locke and the writers of the Magna Carta were doing.
Hayek identifies property rights as a key rule that has allowed societies to flourish and there is plenty of evidence to support this.
Hayek also argues that the growth in democratic government in the modern era is, in part, due to design flaws in the particular model of democracy that emerged in the 1700/1800. Whilst some constraints are imposed on our governments (rules of just of law, separation of powers etc), the majority is sovereign and has vast powers. Further, because any government relies on majority support, if the government has the power to deliver an outcome demanded by any group the government relies on for its majority, the government is compelled to deliver it, regardless of whether it breaches any of the rules of just conduct, like property rights, which has allowed the society to flourish over time.
Rather than positing a claimed natural order, Libertarians would be better placed arguing directly for the importance of property rights and thinking about institutional changes needed to support liberty.