Posted on 08/04/2002 9:31:38 AM PDT by thinktwice
Edited on 04/14/2004 10:05:19 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
I once heard a cop say he should have every right to search my home any time he pleases. If I have nothing to hide, then I should have nothing to fear.
I'll give him credit for this much: Perfectly summarizing the philosophy of the police state.
Nice try, but your out-of-a-novel quotation (?) would be a dramatic portrayal of an EVIL CHARACTER within Ayn Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged," and it does not reflect Ayn Rand's philosophy in any way other than representing the direct opposite to her philosophy.
I didn't know that. The birth of PC?
You'd be best advised to see an attorney, because different states have different laws; but recording a deed with County authorities is usually all it takes to establish good title.
I seem to recall that deeds are automatically title documents, and that some deeds might even be called "Deeds of Title." Check it out.
There's a talk show host by the name of Dennis Prager who has what I think is an interesting test which, when I was a bartender, I used to use often when I was bored. He says ask someone, "Which one of these four qualities do you feel is the most important to strive for in your life: (1) to be successful; (2) to be good; (3) to be happy; or (4) to be intelligent?"
He says that 95 percent of the folks he asks this of reply "To be happy." In my bartending days, the answer to this question was 100 percent "To be happy."
I asked my daughter this question and she replied, "Well, I know what you'd want me to say. You'd want to to be good, but I just want to be happy."
James Madison: "Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions", and:
"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own."
"Government is instituted no less for protection of the property than of the persons of individuals."
John Adams: "[t]he moment that idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the Laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
Daniel Webster: "No other rights are safe where property is not safe."
An eighteenth century judicial opinion best reflects this concept, wherein the Court noted that "the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent and inalienable rights of men.... The preservation of property, then, is a primary object of the social compact." Vanhorne's Lessee v. Dorrance, 2 U.S. 310 (1795).
As we know, early American common law descended from English common law. What did the English think of private property?
Magna Carta: No Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised [deprived wrongfully of real property] of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful Judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. 1297
John Locke: "The great chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property." He also said, "Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience..." --2nd Treatise of Government, 1690 the principal absolute rights which appertain to every Englishman,"
William Blackstone: The principal absolute rights which appertain to every Englishman [are] personal security, personal liberty, and private property.
"It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." --Thomas Jefferson
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