Property Rights

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.

In these dark times in which we are living in the United States, the very definition of property rights is being deliberately obfuscated by the Leftist Liberal Democrats. The government as this is written is taking over more and more businesses and finding new way after new way of confiscating individual wealth and property. This has been going on in violation of the Constitution and the principle of property rights that the U.S. was founded upon for quite a long time now but, sensing that they are going to get caught soon enough, the Democrats are ramrodding these evil measures through with alacrity that is shocking many people--even many less-left-leaning Democrats. But we already know that Democrats are really Socialists--and Socialism is anathema to the U.S. and to all liberty.

Thomas Jefferson wrote of fact that, indeed, there is a place in free American society for Socialism--but only a very limited one. "That, on the principle of a communion of property, small societies may exist in habits of virtue, order, industry, and peace, and consequently in a state of as much happiness as Heaven has been pleased to deal out to imperfect humanity, I can readily conceive, and indeed, have seen its proofs in various small societies which have been constituted on that principle. But I do not feel authorized to conclude from these that an extended society, like that of the United States or of an individual State, could be governed happily on the same principle." (Thomas Jefferson to Cornelius Camden Blatchly, 1822. ME 15:399)

What this means is that the local community, where people can get to know each other on a very personal level, and where people of similar tastes, mind-sets, and assets have come together, can successfully operate on a Socialist principle, meaning that the community rule (with the community being the "government") is highly effective and in the best interests, generally, of everyone. The community can dictate how it wants further development to unfold, and it can, in essence, regulate trade and even redistribute wealth! Yet, this only happens because on this small scale human interactions create what is known as an emergent property; that is, a spontaneous order arises which is self-sustaining and self-regulating. The Utopian dream of the Socialist falls apart when attempts are made to impose this kind of "law" on a wider region, a whole state, or an entire nation, especially one as large and diverse as the United States.

Top-down, large-scale Socialism simply cannot work. It is an abject failure, always has been, and always will be. Governments cannot own property on behalf of other people and then make wise, kind, sensible, or economically viable decisions about how to regulate it and distribute it. Only millions, or hundreds of millions, of individuals each making thousands of localized, intuitive, selfish (as distinct from self-centered) decisions about their assets, their environment, their individual needs, their individual dreams on a daily basis can create the emergent property, the spontaneously arisen order, that is governed by wisdom, kindness, sensibility, and ageless and timeless economic principles that work. Both necessary and sufficient conditions for this way of life are absent from an abstract, centralized government.

Private property rights are the prerequisite for this emergent property that at once preserves individual liberty while serving the whole community with high effectiveness. Private property rights enable individuals to manage some amount of property, the amount being dependent upon a mixture of how much value they have created for other people and how much property they desire. When people own personal property, responsibility comes with their rights and ownership. Very few people feel that it is in their best interests to pollute their property, let it be run-down, let themselves be harmed on their property, and so on. When people have personal property rights, when undesirable things like those just listed do take place, the property owner immediately pays a price. We know that people do live in run-down places, for instance; but does that mean that they really desire to do so? And if they, for some perverse reason, do desire that, soon enough they'll find their better neighbors have moved away, leaving them isolated and leaving them, likely, surrounded by other people of undesirable company who only make that individual property owner suffer more.

This is why, for instance, it has been made irrefutably obvious to all those with eyes to see and ears to hear that as individual wealth increases, pollution and reckless use of natural resources diminish. People who are wealthier own more property and they own more means of finding ways to keep that property as beautiful and healthy as possible. They desire for their property to be beautiful for the sake of their own aesthetic pleasure. They desire for their property to be healthy for the sake of their own health and, quite often, the sake of their own productivity. Wealthy people, by their natures, have no interest in harming the environment--despite the Environmentalists' utterly irrational and fact-less insistence to the contrary.

The Utopian Socialists with their insane and power-mad dreams don't like the fact that in a society run by individual property rights, some people have more than other people. But this is because they can't comprehend, or don't like the fact, that not everyone is willing to work as hard, or as persistently, or as intelligently as all others. They also don't like the fact that in order to live free and independently, a person has no choice but to be exposed to risk. If you are free, bad luck might come your way. You will make mistakes, and some of your mistakes might cost your dearly.

Socialists don't want people to be allowed to, or to have to endure the consequences of, making mistakes; for Socialists live in terror of making mistakes themselves and assume that everyone else also does, or should.

So, when the government takes more and more property for its own (outside of that property that is directly related to performing legitimate government tasks such as property acquired for a military base), it kills more and more liberty--which is the cornerstone of the free, healthy, and productive society. For Socialism must be run by a vast array of bureaucrats. Bureaucrats treat people as things--not as people. The nature of the bureaucrat's job is the management of things, and so that has to include treating people that way. The government absolutely is in no position to recognize, let alone comprehend, the value of a unique individual human being. And those who make it into the highest reaches of a Socialist government absolutely don't care. What matters to them is power--and individual property rights, more than anything else, erode their power.

If you are reading this, stop letting your personal property rights be raped! Join the Second Revolution at American Conservative Values!

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