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

Posted on 09/08/2006 2:48:56 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe

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.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: founders; foundingfathers; genesis; mosaiclaw; propertyrights

1 posted on 09/08/2006 2:48:57 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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BUMP


2 posted on 09/08/2006 3:17:51 PM PDT by XR7
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Luke 18:18-25


3 posted on 09/08/2006 4:03:57 PM PDT by Celebur
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Wow. Let me say that again: Wow.


4 posted on 09/08/2006 4:11:57 PM PDT by PeterFinn (Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.)
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To: Celebur

Luke 16:31...


5 posted on 09/09/2006 7:17:04 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of an earthly monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.

Mosaic Law (of which the Ten Commandments is just a part) is the foundation of Western Civilization. Genesis is the primary focus of the Declaration of Independence, from where our Constitutional rights are derived. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our judicial system.

From where are the rights enumerated in the United States Constitution derived?

ANSWER: Declaration of Independence...

"...to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them... that all men are created... Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world... with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence..."

It is a page right out of Mosaic Law... our rights are not subject to an earthly monarch (i.e., King George).


6 posted on 09/09/2006 7:26:53 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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To: Sir Francis Dashwood

I have no issue with the idea that individual rights should not be subject to the whims of an earthly monarch.

But the article posted above borders on the repugnant with the implication of God-sanctioned materialism. Luke 16:31 does nothing to counter that.

To argue that the right to private proterty is God-sanctioned is very telling when other God-sanctioned concepts (such as that of Jubilee) are decidedly absent. Is that just an oversight?

But as for Mosaic Law, Martin Luther preached an excellent sermon (How Christians Should Regard Moses) to put it in perspective back in 1525 (in the context of countering the preaching of the radical reformers who claimed that the Mosaic Law must be obeyed in its entirety):

"Had there been educated preachers around, they could have stood up to the false prophets and stopped them, and said this to them, "Dear factious spirits, it is true that God commanded this of Moses and spoke thus to the people; but we are not this people. . .It is all God's word. But let God's word be what it may, I must pay attention and know to whom God's word is addressed. You are still a long way from being the people with whom God spoke." The false prophets say, "You are that people, God is speaking to you." You must prove that to me. . .

"The word in Scripture is of two kinds: the first does not pertain or apply to me, the other kind does. And upon that word which does pertain to me I can boldly trust and rely, as upon a strong rock. But if it does not pertain to me, then I should stand still. The false prophets pitch in and say, "Dear people, this is the word of God," That is true; we cannot deny it. But we are not the people. God has not given us the directive. The factious spirits came in and wanted to stir up something new, saying, "We must keep the Old Testament also..' So they led the peasants into a sweat and ruined them in wife and child. . .

"Therefore tell this to Moses: Leave Moses and his people together; they have had their day and do not pertain to me. I listen to that word which applies to me. We have the gospel. . ."


7 posted on 09/26/2006 3:20:25 PM PDT by Celebur
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To: Celebur
Martin Luther did not establish the Judaic Bible, nor did he establish the Christian one... But, being an atheist, I could really care less what you or Martin Luther thinks of Genesis, Exodus or Deuteronomy; it is still written into the philosophical foundation of this civilization and is the basis of our laws. I am not in the least distressed by it, the other options to date are not all that exciting...
8 posted on 09/26/2006 6:54:53 PM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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