Reading Charlie’s post today on the value of ownership reminded me of Genesis 23. In this chapter, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, dies. After weeping over her death, Abraham enters into a commercial transaction with Ephron the Hittite to buy a parcel of land with a cave where he may bury her — and where others in his family will one day be buried. Abraham and Ephron conduct this sale in public view, with Abraham “in the hearing of the Hittites” announcing what he wishes to pay for the land: “As much money as it is worth.” Ephron proclaims the price to be 400 silver shekels, and Abraham then weighs out the 400 shekels. “And Ephron’s field . . . the field and the cave that was in it and every tree in the field, within its boundaries and all around, passed over to Abraham as a possession, in the full view of the Hittites. And Abraham buried Sarah.” The King James Version says that the field and cave “were made sure.” In other words, no one could take them away from Abraham or his descendants. The legalism and the level of detail — so evident elsewhere in the Old Testament as well — had me saying to myself, “That thug Trudeau should take a lesson in private-property rights from Genesis!”
So I agree with Charlie, and my husband and I will be keeping our car and lawnmower, and also all the hard copies of our books and the music that we’ve grown used to accessing on Kindle and Spotify. “Maybe it’s time to figure out Bitcoin” is running through my mind. After all, I pondered donating $50 to the truckers’ convoy — and said so to friends. (Is the FBI monitoring Facebook groups that have the word “freedom” in their name?) Will the mere public mention of sympathy for the convoy have my bank freezing my accounts? I’ve donated in the past to candidates who are very much not in favor with the current powers that be. Will that retroactively be categorized as illegal, or suspicious enough to get me placed on some kind of watch list? Trudeau is making life hell for people who made even small donations that were perfectly legal when they made them. A little paranoia is only prescient in such illiberal times.