Property and Freedom

Private Property is the Basis of Freedom

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“Take away my property and you take away my freedom.”  
 

Why?
 

It is through obtaining and managing property that we exercise our freedoms: where we work (our salaries), what we accumulate, what we invest attention and resources in, the lifestyle we live. If we remove property ownership, what would we exercise our freedoms on? If we can’t own food, we starve; if we can’t own clothing, we freeze; if we can’t secure a dwelling, we suffer the elements. Every goal we set, plan we draft, and item we create requires some form of property for completion.
 

When another owns the property we need, we are at his mercy—we do what he says or we cannot survive, let alone thrive. In a few generations, the loss of property rights in a society would create a mindless, gutless culture of individuals that do only what they are told to do.
 

This sobering fact is at the root of socialism and communism, its more violent form, to gain control of the production and distribution of all property. Control the property, control the people. The Communist Manifesto quotes it this way, “…the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property.” While the ultimate goal is outright possession, an intermediate level of control is accomplished with rules, regulations, taxation, welfare, zoning and licensing requirements. Taxes, fines, fees, and welfare redistribute wealth, while regulations, licenses, and zoning restrict activities not wanted by government. America has followed a freedom-destroying path, gradually descending into a morass of regulatory and taxation control. In the last decade, however, we have seen the government take outright possession of whole segments of our commerce and society. Usually this is done “for our own good”. This is socialism.
 

A free and honest government protects the property of its citizens; a dishonest government takes their property. A classic example involves the USSR and Ukraine, its fertile breadbasket. In the 1950s Stalin wanted money to build military might. He confiscated the entire grain crop of Ukraine to accomplish that objective, leaving the people without the means to survive. Between 5,000,000 and 8,000,000 people starved to death in Ukraine that year because the government had control of their property—in this case, their actual lives.
 

Our Founders well understood that property is freedom. They wrote that idea into the Declaration of Independence with this statement: “…all men are endowed by their Creator with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. (At the time, this last phrase was commonly understood to refer to property, as property, freedom and happiness were virtually synonymous.)
 

Our severe regulatory government, with its excessive taxation, has taken a major toll on our freedoms and wrenched much of our private property from our control. Make your elected representatives accountable to you for their past votes to increase taxation, bureaucracy and regulatory power. Tell them you don’t want socialism.
 

Make it stick at the ballot box.

 

 

- Pam