The Trump administration’s executive order touching national parks management has revived a long-running argument about public land governance in the United States — an argument that is older than the current political alignment and will outlast it. The tension between conservation as federal stewardship and land use as economic opportunity has structured Interior Department policy debates since Theodore Roosevelt established the modern framework in the early twentieth century. The National Park System as currently constituted covers roughly 85 million acres across more than 400 designated sites.

The question of what holds Europe together has no clean answer, which is precisely why it keeps being asked. Economic integration explains the structure. NATO explains the security architecture. But neither explains why people in Lisbon and Tallinn — sharing no language, no climate, no cuisine, no living memory of each other — can nonetheless recognize something common between them. European identity is not a legal category. It cannot be conferred by passport or treaty.