Whose land do they die for?

National defense is a public good whose costs are universal but whose benefits—capitalized as a security premium Δv = vp into land values—are concentrated among landowners. This paper derives the normative case for land value taxation from a proportionality principle grounded independently in Aristotelian distributive justice, contractarian rationality, and libertarian self-ownership—a route logically independent of the Georgist ontological argument and the Henry George Theorem. A baseline model shows that the inter-group net-gain differential is vᵢp + δᵢ, from which the universal survival benefit drops out. An intergenerational extension incorporating conscription reveals a double asymmetry. Three historical cases—Rome, post-WWI Britain, and Korea’s land reform—provide consistency checks. The framework extends beyond defense to other public goods, generating a gradation of normative force.