Last time I showed how the Oregon showdown centers on property rights, and the federal government’s attempt to clear out private farmers so it can keep on expanding public land. Private property is a fundamental right, which Pope Leo XIII went so far as to call “sacred,” a point on which our Protestant Founders would surely have agreed. In his own way, so did Karl Marx, who knew that private property (along with the bourgeois family, and religious faith) was the main stumbling block to creating his own utopia. In recognition of all this, the great Richard Weaver called private property “the last metaphysical right” — that is, the one right which even poorly schooled citizens can see is grounded in the very nature of things.

So of course, the New York Times is denying it. By way of seeing how much progressives can get away with, it published a trial balloon puffed up by an academic philosopher, an essay that claims that private property rights are “intellectually bankrupt.” Why? Because we can’t base our current conception of them on irrefutable arguments that flow from universally accepted principles. Do you know what else that is true of? Everything in the discipline of philosophy, since there are no such universally accepted principles. There haven’t been for hundreds of years. Cartesians don’t agree with Thomists or Platonists on even the basic principles of knowledge, much less the right mode of argument — not to mention the explosion in the 20^th century of philosophers who make up their own language and terminology, which can’t be translated into any other system. Hence a follower of Heidegger or Derrida cannot hold a meaningful dialogue with a traditional philosopher. (Devotees of Slavoj Zizek can’t even understand what they themselves are saying.) So most professors just talk past each other, and their departments don’t traffic in actual knowledge so much as exotic, learned opinion. Those professors should admit this, and start calling themselves “philodoxers.”

So no, we won’t look to a secular academic philosopher if we wish to understand the basis of property rights. Instead, let’s hearken to history and experience. What is political philosophy, but a way of talking about how we want to live, and our children to live, based on the lessons we draw from previous generations’ experiments, successes, and failures?

So what happens when people have firm legal claim to their private property, to the land that they live on and the products they create, either physical or mental (i.e., copyrights and patents)? They work at it, improve it, take care of it, and strive to pass it on to their children. If they know that their property will be safely stored in a bank, they will save and accumulate it — so it can be leant out to business owners who want to expand. If citizens know that the title to their home will be secure, they will work hard for decades to pay it off — or use it as collateral for starting small businesses, creating jobs for the younger and poorer.

What results when people don’t have firm legal title to their property, protected by the government? Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist, told us in his classic The Mystery of Capital: The impoverished Third World is the result.

As de Soto documents, vast portions of the human race, in the billions of people, are hard-working, honest, thrifty … and hopelessly trapped in poverty, in favelas and shanty towns with unreliable services dominated by criminal gangs, for one simple reason: It is almost impossible for the poor to protect their property rights. The elites that dominate such societies have set up formal legal systems that take no account of the real, existing property relationships. Hence most of the populations of enormous human settlements such as Mexico City or Rio de Janeiro are formally squatters, with no legal claim on the homes that they built, the land they improved, or even the businesses that they founded.

Given the byzantine layers of red tape set up by regulators in those countries, only the elite can afford to do anything “by the book.” In fact, they wrote “the book,” perhaps with precisely this in mind. No one can mortgage his home to start a business, since his home isn’t legally his (or anyone else’s) and anyway such a business would doubtless violate dozens of obscure laws or regulations, which aren’t really enforced — but always could be, so his future will never be secure. All of it could be taken away by some official of the government, if it suits a utopian project, or even his private whim.

That is Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ dream — that every stick and stone, every classroom lecture or Facebook post, every hiring decision or church sermon, be politicized and policed, and subject to their power. That is the evil which our political ancestors fought against, when they rose up against the Stuarts, and George III. It is the profound injustice that peasants in Ukraine faced when Stalin decided to steal their land, and they fought as best as they could. Of course, they failed, and instead starved in the millions. You see, they had no weapons. Americans do, which may be one reason we still have our rights, including property rights and religious rights. If one falls, the others go next.