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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >If you can find a way to be less certain than "always" I think we are  
> in agreement.
> 
> There is something about that word that gives me pause.


Ah, but cuidado that you don't back yourself into a pretty koan!  Are you 
essentially saying that we can never say 'always'?   But ... then .... isn't 
'never' just as absolute!

> 
> I've not been a fan of futuristic sci-fi books, but I do have a good  
> imagination, and I can imagine a time when living on one's private  
> piece of dirt might not be allowed. That said, I do not see that  
> scenario in our lifetime, so I guess that could be considered always.
> 

ALways?

A variation of this is one of Herself's concerns.  That in a breakdown the 
powers that be might come to such remote places and say, "You have a college 
degree and/or skills and we can't allow that to be wasted back here in 
nowhere!"

>It occurs that we might from time to time stop to consider that with  
all the flaws we see in America, this is one of the few countries with  
laws and conditions that allow the homesteading life. 

This is a concept I'm much interested in.  Sans our oil driven lifestyle, how 
much motivation is there, or has there ever been, for the government to 
extend its arm out this far for a few handfuls of grain or a pail of milk?

What got me thinking about that was Victor Davis Hanson's "The Other Greeks". 
 It is peppered full of quotes and terms in Greek, and even if you can follow 
that, it still reads like molasses in January.  But none the less, his ideas 
are fascinating.  

Located way back on isolated mountain sides and on tiny bits of fertility 
along the islands and coast, says he, the real story of ancient Greece was in 
its 
independent farmsteads.  The city-states had little influence over them and 
expended some deal of effort to woo them.

Like that, through history, when people went off into the hills and notches, 
into the swamps and sloughs, out into the desert, etc.  ... just how 
profitable was it for any despot or potentate to attempt to exploit them?   

Hanson quotes one ancient Greek author recounting how the revenue officers 
were far afield and came across a man and his sons and servants moving stones 
on 
a dry mountain side to make terraces. Asked the officer, "What sort of crops 
does land like this yield?" and the farmer replied "Aches and pains."   
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