"New Zealand was born free without having to become so"
"Self-government and the rule of law came to New Zealand from above. These great principles were ordained by imperial authority. The result, to paraphrase de Tocqueville, was that New Zealand was born free without having to become so. It never had to fight for self-government, or win its rights by armed struggle."
~ Historian David Hackett Fischer, from his book Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States
9 comments:
Nonsense. It never was free. Still isn't.
For one example, check out who owns the land of NZ. The vast majority of it belongs to the Crown. People who think they own the property they live on are wrong with this belief. They only own a tenancy. The land they think is theirs is not theirs. It all belongs to the King.
@Amonymous: You've heard of a thing in British law called "useful fictions"?
PC: I presume you mean "legal fictions"
Anon: I suspect you might be the same Anon who commented on the plague/vaccines earlier. Both posts display the same over-literalism, that's commonly associated with those on the autism spectrum.
@PC
Yes and one of those "useful fictions" freedom in NZ.
@ Anonymous: My apologies, I had thought that your original comment was intended to be take seriously. Now I realise why yo'ire too embarrassed to add your name to your comments.
A legal fiction (as Mark corrected me) is "probably best defined as 'a legal assumption that something is true which is, or may be, false-being an assumption of an innocent and beneficial character, made to advance the interests of justice.' From the definition it would seem that such fictions would always merit praise, never blame. ... BLACKSTONE says 'fictions of law, though at first they may startle the student, he will find upon further consideration to be highly beneficial and useful; especially as this maxim is ever invariably observed, that no fiction shall extend to work an injury; its proper operation being to prevent a mischief, or remedy an inconvenience, that might result from the general rule of law."
The idea of 'fee simple' land title is one of these useful legal fictions, arising as the easiest way to extricate English land tenure from the mire of feudalism without "too much fuss" ("solutions without fuss" being a key characterisrtic of the common law). "The fiction used to explain it was that all land tenures derived from an original feudal grant in exchange for personal military service. ... The same rules applied to modern grants of land in fee simple, which were fictitiously held to derive from an ancient ancestor who had been given the feudal grant."
In short, only an idiot would sat that this means people don't own the land they own. But 'idiot' might be the best way to describe your anonymous contributions here. (I'd advise using your own name, and thinking before you type.)
PS: I think I've written here and elsewhere enough about freedom in NZ over the last twenty years to be pretty clear what my view is on that. I suggest you begin by understanding the context of the quote...
PC - Legal fictions are an interesting concept I've never come across before. I was only able to correct you because I googled it not understanding your meaning, found nothing about "useful fictions", but saw a description about "legal fictions" that seemed to match what you were referring to.
We'd both agree that some of our property rights have been under attack in NZ, particularly under the RMA. But the RMA wasn't around then, and they're not under attack by King Charles of England now - a conclusion that only an over-literal mindset disconnected from reality would come to.
We do not have perfect freedom, but we have much more than most people have had for the majority of human existence, and most other nations do right now. For that we should be grateful, whatever our political gripes.
I suppose legal fictions are similar to a "heuristic" - something that may not be literally true, but a useful mental model to understand, navigate reality, or get the desired result, at least most of the time. They're useful, provided you understand they're not literal, and you prioritise actual results in reality above anything else. Does the Crown limit the freedom to use your land in any meaningful way? Nope.
I think that "Anonymous" is actually one of the Sovereign Citizen people that have begun to appear in slightly larger numbers in recent years across the Anglosphere.
As I understand it one of their arguments is that we currently don't own anything in this system but merely rent it, courtesy of having consented to "illigitimate authorities" and that the way to fight back in almost any legal issue is simply to refuse to consent to any current authority.
As I recall from some debates I've seen, this is not just about the USA but tied all the way back to England's King Alfred and his Common Law and the Norman Invasion some two centuries later, among other things.
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