[BartSimpson]

Quote:

Private Property: Right From God, Friend of Republics
newsmax.com ^ | May 24, 2006 | Steve Farrell


To possess a memory is to be blessed with a priceless good. It is our link to the past, our guidepost to the present and our passport to the future. It is who we are, what we believe and how we fit in. It is that fixed vantage point in a world of confusion that gives us a degree of security, stability and moral direction.

One need not tell us what would happen if we were to sever the cord that connects a man, a family, or a nation to who he is and what he has learned. Such a clean-slated one might be transformed into a naive Pinocchio or a tra-la-la Pollyanna, whose lack of experience would lead him or her into the grasp of one of a million ‘Honest Johns' who offer frills and thrills that later come crashing down upon them in a carnival of deception and slavery.

Memory is critical, both to individuals and to nations.

Yet America has lost her memory, lost her fixed vantage point, lost her sense of the laws that protect liberty for all, not just liberty for the few. I speak of America's failure to recall the historical belief that liberty is only possible within the confines of fixed law.

Today, the law floats upon the winds of emotion and upon the arrows of moral appeals which miss the mark about religion, and which miss the mark, also, about our Founders' republic, the very republic which was established to protect religion and the inalienable rights religion proclaims as the common lot of mankind.

The Pre-eminence of Higher Law

So let us enter upon a brief reminder: Our rights, our liberties, our best laws are the result of the wisdom of our Forefathers in placing God's law above man's law—literally setting the biblical law as both the foundation stone and the keystone in the arch of the great body of American law.

Blackstone, the most frequently quoted legal authority in the early days of our Republic noted:


Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. There are, it is true, a great number of indifferent points, in which both the divine law and the natural leave a man at his own liberty; but . . . with regard to such points as are not indifferent, human laws are only declaratory of, and act in subordination to, the former. (1)
It was upon this same rock-solid conviction that Thomas Jefferson declared to all the world:


"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness [the right and control of property]." (2)
That is, since God is the author of our Rights, no king or president, no House of Lords or Senate, no House of Commons or House of Representatives, no Supreme Court or unelected bureaucrat can ever abridge those rights.

Which leads to Jefferson's next point: "To secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among men." (3) Or in other words, as the Alabama Constitution put it, "the sole and only legitimate object of government is to protect the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression." (4)

Which Right Is the Greatest?

Government's job, consistent with Divine Law, is to secure our rights. That's clear enough. But it seems equally persuasive that there is one right upon which the survival of all others hinge—property.

Jefferson wrote: "The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property, and in their management." To which he added, the defense of private property is the standard by which "every provision" of law, past and present, shall be judged. (5) This is partially so because the definition of private property, and its application in the law, is broader than we sometimes suspect.

French economist Frederic Bastiat, in his 1850 treatise on The Law, explains:


What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right—from God—to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? (6)
Justice George Sutherland of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1921 echoed the following: "The three great rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave." (7)

Thus, the three great rights, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence thundered, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," are but one great right—property;—and as such, protecting private property becomes the chief business of a republic, as Jefferson stated.

Tyrants Know This Too

If a belief in higher law and the protection of private property is the work of a republic, then, plainly, the work of tyrannical government is to abolish or control God, the author of that law, and eliminate or control property, the great right God guarantees.

It's that simple. Just ask Karl Marx.

"The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property." (8)

In saying this, it must be understood that Marx had the same broad interpretation of property in mind that the Founders did—for, said he, "the eternal laws of nature and of reason . . . [sprang] from [the] present mode of production and form of property."

Religious principles like—"thou shalt not steal," "thou shalt not covet," "thou shalt not bear false witness," "thou shalt not kill (murder)," "thou shalt not commit adultery," "thou shalt have no other gods before me" (including the state), and the command that man shall be "lord over the whole earth," that is, lord over all living things—sustain the existing order of private property; as such, all of them are targeted for eradication as obstacles in the way of a revolution against the existing order.

And so, it is that private property, religion and the religious definition of the family are one and the same enemy—property.

And so, there is a strand of thought here that we must understand: An attack on our property is an attack on our religion, and vice versa.

Founder John Adams understood why: "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is no force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist." (9)

True religion proclaims the right to private property. True government upholds it. Tyranny targets both private property and religion for elimination.

Enter Modern Liberalism and Its Sister Compassionate Conservatism

Communism with a capital "C" puts a bad taste in most folks' mouths. Its real intent, the destruction of human liberty and the acquirement of personal power are generally known. But when you call the same underlying principles Compassionate with a capital "C" and Conservative with a capital "C," miraculously the prospect of tyranny is supposed to taste sweet. Compassionate Conservatism, a political movement which preaches from the Bible even while it grasps behind its back a red (but softer metalled) hammer in one hand, and a red (but duller edged) sickle in the other, does this. It's rhetoric is so persuasive that more than a few partisans on both sides of the political aisle actually believe it is Christian, rather than Socialist, and thus oppose or support it accordingly.

But think again.

Compassionate Conservatism states: "Individuals are responsible to love our neighbors as we want to be loved ourselves." This sounds Christian. The trouble is not enough private citizens are taking care of their neighbors. So what is Compassionate Conservatism's solution?

"It will be government that serves those who are serving their neighbors. It will be government that directs help to the inspired and effective. It will be government that both knows its limits and shows its heart. And it will be government truly by the people and for the people." (10)

That is, government will forcibly confiscate property in the tens of billions of dollars (that's only the beginning), and redistribute it to ‘private' groups it ‘trusts' to disperse the money back to the people.

This age-old Communist trick of robbing Peter to pay Paul is defined by Compassionate Conservatism as "a different role for government. A fresh start. A bold new approach." (11) Thus, theft is compassion, forced giving is charity, attacking private property is conservative, and all of the above is new.

It isn't. It is but shades of liberalism, socialism, and the other ‘isms' dressed up in new garb.

James Madison, Father of our Constitution, rejected just such a scheme two centuries ago. He wrote:


Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . . This being the end of government, that alone is not a just government, . . . nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. (12)
It is easy to be ‘charitable' with other people's money. It is convenient to rewrite the Bible in the image of one's political ideology. And it is useful to re-invent government from the protector of man's God-given rights to government being God himself, even a god who defines—on a flex schedule—what our rights are. Power-seeking men and political opportunists will always attempt the same. That is why our Founders – men who found the mark with religion in public life – preached the pre-eminence of God's law, declared our rights fixed and inalienable, and established a Republic with but one central purpose in mind – the protection of private property.

[Zipperfish]

Thanks for the thought-provoking piece, Bart.

I thought this was going to be a great article -- as a practical libertarian, I usually like artilces about private property. But this guy goes socialist--fast. Thus idea that attacks on private property are on atatck on God, because principles of private property are reflected in teh Bible was not well researched.

He cites Christian principles like the ten commandments, but these preinciples are present in most religions and most cultures. "Thou shalt not steal" can be construed as a Darwinian principle as easily as a Christian one.

The essence of capitalism and private property and Adam Smith's economy is that when individuals seek their own self-interest, it is better fo rthe collective than when the collective seeks to seek its interest. It's a lesson, unfortunately on the new socialists, that being the neo-conservatives, who seek the best for all through their collective actions.

[BartSimpson]

Zip,
You are welcome - I don't agree with everything the fellow says but I do agree with the main theme that property rights and, more importantly, human rights, are not the grants of governments.

In the USA I constantly run into people who blather about their "Constitutional rights".

No such thing exists.

The Constitution enumerates rigts that it says you already have. It goes on in the several Amendments to prohibit government from infringing on those rights. It also delegates powers to the government so that it can govern - meaning that the fount of power is the People and not the government.

My point when I rebuke people for saying that rights are subject to the whims of governments and even electorates is that such things are not rights at all, they are merely privileges to be withdrawn at whim.

My right to self defense does not disappear if I travel in a country where self-defense is illegal...such as the UK. My right to carry a weapon to defend myself does not disappear if I enter a city where such a thng is illegal...such as New York or Wash., D.C.

My right to free speech does not disappear where ever I may go.

My rights may be infringed, but they are still my rights.

People in Red China have all of these rights, too. Their government infringes on them and should be toppled. Violently, if needs be. A government that uses violence to dominate and enslave the people it should serve deserves to perish by the same means it employs.

Now the atheist folks may be offended about all the mention of God, but I'll grant them this and allow that rights are inherent in all of us and cannot be legislated or voted away.

[Jaime_Souviens]

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[Jaime_Souviens]

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[Hardy]

In a way, though, Bart's author is right about one important point.

Authors of the 1600s-1700s did tend to base their theories of the role of the state on the idea of "natural law," which they said had to come from God.

That's not to say that you're going to find anything in the Bible to justify most laws, but those authors did make natural law the tentpole which holds the whole thing up. If you say that there is no natural law, then all of their theories lose their justification.

But natural law need not derive from God. Researchers recently noticed that chimpanzees have a sense of justice, and will try to rectify things when obviously different rewards are given to different chimps for carrying out the same task. So you can base a whole philosophical edifice on natural law derived from human nature.

Of course some may dispute your generalities about human nature, and claim that they aren't based in fact. But you're still in better shape than before, since human nature can at least be convincingly shown to exist, while a particular deity cannot.

[Zipperfish]

Jaime_Souviens wrote:

That's why they used in the U.S. Declaration of Independence the phrase 'inalienable rights'. Because other forms of property are alienable. If you own land, you can alienate it. But these political rights, or political properties, must be different property that is inalienable..

I didn't know that. The Declaration of Independence, as well as being an important docuemnt, is alos one of the finest feats of English literature in existence, in my opinion.

[Zipperfish]

BartSimpson wrote:

Zip,
You are welcome - I don't agree with everything the fellow says but I do agree with the main theme that property rights and, more importantly, human rights, are not the grants of governments.

In the USA I constantly run into people who blather about their "Constitutional rights".

No such thing exists.

The Constitution enumerates rigts that it says you already have. It goes on in the several Amendments to prohibit government from infringing on those rights. It also delegates powers to the government so that it can govern - meaning that the fount of power is the People and not the government.

My point when I rebuke people for saying that rights are subject to the whims of governments and even electorates is that such things are not rights at all, they are merely privileges to be withdrawn at whim.

My right to self defense does not disappear if I travel in a country where self-defense is illegal...such as the UK. My right to carry a weapon to defend myself does not disappear if I enter a city where such a thng is illegal...such as New York or Wash., D.C.

My right to free speech does not disappear where ever I may go.

My rights may be infringed, but they are still my rights.

People in Red China have all of these rights, too. Their government infringes on them and should be toppled. Violently, if needs be. A government that uses violence to dominate and enslave the people it should serve deserves to perish by the same means it employs.

Now the atheist folks may be offended about all the mention of God, but I'll grant them this and allow that rights are inherent in all of us and cannot be legislated or voted away.

By ldegal definition a "right" assumes the existence of a government. A "right," legally, means that the government guarantees to intervene. A "freedom," conversely, means that the government is bound not to intervene.

So you not only a have "freedom of speech" (you can say what you wish adn teh government will let you) but also the "right to freedom of speech" (the government will intervene if anyone tries to obstrcut your freedom to speak.

So when Rumsfeld said, during all the looting in Iraq (I know, I know--I just can't through a single frickin' post without the four-letter "I" word, can I?) that "Iraqis were free to do bad things" he was right. A society in anarchy is the most free society you can get, since there is no govermment ot intervene. In other words a perfectly free society is not a thing to be desired.

The problem was that Iraqis had no rights. They were free to kill because there was no right to life; free to steal because there was no right to property.

A functioning society has to have a balance between freedoms and rights.

And duties -- the one everyone always forgets.

Anyway, after reading yours, Jaime's and Hardy's posts, I think I have a better understanding of what the original article was about.

[Hardy]

Zipperfish wrote:

I didn't know that. The Declaration of Independence, as well as being an important docuemnt, is alos one of the finest feats of English literature in existence, in my opinion.

Especially when you consider that it is a political document written by a committee!

[Jaime_Souviens]

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[Zipperfish]

Yes, it's rare in history we see a group of people of that caliber.

[Jaime_Souviens]

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[Jaime_Souviens]

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[Zipperfish]

Jaime_Souviens wrote:

Quote:

By legal definition a "right" assumes the existence of a government. A "right," legally, means that the government guarantees to intervene. A "freedom," conversely, means that the government is bound not to intervene.

No.

Well, if you're a lawyer, please correct to me. That is how it was explained to me by a Constitutional lawyer when I asked (with respect to Canada's Charter of Rights adn Freedoms") what the difference between a right and a freedom was.

Obviously this differs from the "inalienable" right definition. Or Bart's description that a right is a right, regardless of the state.

[Jaime_Souviens]

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