i went to a private school, and i remember my American history teacher saying that the difference between liberals and conservatives was that liberals put the rights of people above property rights, but conservatives put property rights above people, or something like that!
on the other hand, he was against gun control and also told us about union featherbedding.
President Taft confronted the issue of so-called Human Rights in 1912 recoginizing them for what they were, a construct meant to trump Property Rights. I have stolen a find from nicolo as follows. Taft stated:
It has been said, and it is a common platform expression, that it is well to prefer the man above the dollar, as if the preservation of property rights has some other purpose than the assistance to and the uplifting of human rights. Private property was not established in order to gratify love of some material wealth or capital. It was established as an instrumentality in the progress of civilization and the uplifting of man, and it is equality of opportunity that private property promotes by assuring to man the result of his own labor, thrift, and self-restraint.When, therefore, the demagogue mounts the platform and announces that he prefers the man above the dollar, he ought to be interrogated as to what he means thereby -- whether he is in favor of abolishing the right of the institution of private property and of taking away from the poor man the opportunity to become wealthy by the use of the abilities that God has given him, the cultivation of the virtues with which practice of self-restraint and the exercise of moral courage will fortify him.