(Property rights)-- The forgotten fundamental right

The Orange County Register ^ | 4 August 2002 | Steven Greenhut

[thinktwice]

The American public can easily grasp the constitutional concepts of "free speech," or "free exercise of religion," or the "right to peaceably assemble." By contrast, the phrase "property rights" doesn't have the same cachet - it just lies there like some arcane principle that must be debated by lawyers before we know what it really means.

[inquest]

I don't know where that first question mark came from, after "scrutiny". The liberal conspiracy must have put it in there. It should have been a period?

[TigersEye]

What these critics advocate is a form of majoritarianism, in which everyone has a say on everyone else's business. It's the antithesis of what the American founding is all about, and the perfect embodiment of the oft-quoted definition of democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The goal of socialism is communism.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

[TigersEye]

Substittute "dog" or "child" for "flag" to see ow ridiculous this statement is.

If it's my dog on my property then I can shoot it if I darn well please.

I admit that I substituted shoot for burn but...it works for me.

[RightWhale]

our carefully evolved systems of property rights

A case of ID -- Intelligent Design. From the mind of man; a universe of law. For us the legal world is the real world; the world most people see instead is the physical world.

I draw maps. There are two kinds of maps. One kind is maps of the physical world, elevation contours, lakes and rivers, Highway 101, what you can see out the windshield. The other kind are maps of the legal world, property lines, rights-of-way, utility easements. Which are maps of the real world?

[MattinNJ]

If I'm not mistaken, nobody owns land in this country. Even if you were to pay your mortgage in full, you still owe property taxes. If you don't pay them, the government throws you off the land and "rents" to someone else. The government is like one giant landlord. I can't imagine that the founding fathers ever intended this.

[thinktwice]

we have to face reality.

Some absolute realitys are...

A. Individual freedom is a human right.
B. Owning property is a human right.
C. Taxation or confiscation of property is theft if said action is taken by governmental systems that violate human rights.

[inquest]

A. Individual freedom is a human right.
B. Owning property is a human right.
C. Taxation or confiscation of property is theft if said action is taken by governmental systems that violate human rights.

So that qualifier in C. seems a little redundant to me, based on what you said in B. If I'm reading it correctly, what you're describing has been going on since the founding era, with the full blessing of the prevailing political opinions of the time.

[thinktwice]

A. Individual freedom is a human right.
B. Owning property is a human right.
C. Taxation or confiscation of property is theft if said action is taken by governmental systems that violate human rights.

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states ...

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts an provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States ...

A government limited, is a government controlled; but then the original Congress wasn't much affected by the U.S. Constitution, and that original Congress has since morphed into an elect and spend, welfare state, to-hell-with-the-Constitution Congress doing much more than paying the Debts or providing for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. Consider those Constitutional words within the context of the USA Joining in and paying for UN activities, for instance.

[inquest]

I think we've begun to drift off the subject of property rights. I wouldn't disagree with anything you said in your last post.

[Outlaw76]

I cannot think of how any judge in good continence ever allowed for taxing land, and the confiscation of land for a failure to pay said tax.

In truth people only purchase the right to pay rent to the county and state. They cannot make any improvement they want, they cannot use the land in any way they please, and they will certainly loose the land if they fail to pay rent(tax).

When that was allowed we came near full circle on property rights from where we were when we fought for independence. Now though, the King doesn't own our land, the 'government' does, and we lack even the rights a feudal lord once held.
It disturbs me greatly that so many of the things our founding fathers faught for have been destroyed already.

[TopQuark]

TigersEye: If it's my dog on my property then I can shoot it if I darn well please.

I admit that I substituted shoot for burn but...it works for me.

Thanks for your honesty. I now know a lot about you and what you want this country to be.

[snopercod]

I cannot think of how any judge in good continence ever allowed for taxing land, and the confiscation of land for a failure to pay said tax.

I'm not sure of the origins of the property tax, but it was used in medieval England - it goes back at least that far.

[TigersEye]

I now know a lot about you and what you want this country to be.

And I even more about you. ; )

[Teacher317]

If one pays-off their mortgage on a property...

why do they still have to pay money under threat of losing their homes (property taxes)? Isn't that called rent?

[Old Fud]

Isn't that called rent?

"Rent" is charitable. It's somfin else.

[hinckley buzzard]

It is mentioned explicitly in the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights:
"nor shall any person...be deprived of life liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."

Nothing murky about that as far as I can see.

And of course the Fourth Amendmnt specifies the "right to be secure in persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause."

Hard to pretend that that isn't clear, although words like "unreasonable" and "probable" keep some of the excess lawyers employed.

[RightWhale]

4th and 5th Amendments might seem clear enough, but they are being violated every day. It would appear the entire Bill of Rights is in big trouble.