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To: Shalom Israel
“I own land. It's mine. If I want to "opt out" of this contract I never opted into in the first place, then I must allow my land to be stolen from me.”

"It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... 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 to Isaac McPherson, 1813.

"A right of property in moveable things is admitted before the establishment of government. A separate property in lands, not till after that establishment. The right to moveables is acknowledged by all the hordes of Indians surrounding us. Yet by no one of them has a separate property in lands been yielded to individuals. He who plants a field keeps possession till he has gathered the produce, after which one has as good a right as another to occupy it. Government must be established and laws provided, before lands can be separately appropriated, and their owner protected in his possession. Till then, the property is in the body of the nation, and they, or their chief as trustee, must grant them to individuals, and determine the conditions of the grant." --Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812.

Others might say: Your ownership of land is dependant on a Social contract. You “signed” your agreement with it by buying land under its terms. (Those terms are implicit but as someone over the age of 18 you’re expected to know what they are.) If you opt out of the contract it is not stealing if your land is forfeit (if it even is, you said it not me), the forfeiture is a penalty for breaking the contract.

Aside from all that, who besides you said the only way you can opt out is by submitting to a violation of your property rights?

Who besides you said you must allow your land to be stolen from you?

I didn’t say that and you posted to me.

437 posted on 02/25/2006 5:29:21 PM PST by KrisKrinkle
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To: KrisKrinkle
"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." --Thomas Jefferson

Right: Tommy said that. Tommy was wrong. Most egregiously of all, in this paragraph he attempts to prove it by special pleading: "it is agreed by those who have seriously considered..."

If you opt out of the contract it is not stealing if your land is forfeit (if it even is, you said it not me), the forfeiture is a penalty for breaking the contract.

This observation of yours is interesting and to the point. I only fear that you will confuse it with a "social contract"! Recall that I already clearly spelled out that it's possible for a property to be encumbered with a variance, and it is possible to construct a variance that almost fits your description. The conclusion, if we pursued that subject carefully, would be to discover that "social contracts" are completely unneccessary, because honest-to-goodness contracts can produce all the desired results without the negative consequences of "social contracts".

However, that is not the situation today, for three reasons. First, my land is not encumbered with a contract stipulating that the owner must have entered into a "citizenship agreement" anything like your social contract: in fact Pakistanis can buy land in America without ever leaving Pakistan, let alone entering into such an agreement.

Second, the original colonists did not enter voluntarily into a contract in the first place. They were subjected, whether they liked it or not, to an imposition of power. Since they didn't "sign" this hypothetical contract, they could not in particular have encumbered their lands as part of such a contract, and hence they cannot have passed their lands so encumbered to their heirs.

Thirdly, US law does not regard my property as encumbered by a variance such that I forfeit it if I breach certain terms. Rather, US law consistently treats my property as mine, but also regards government as vested with the authority to seize property whenever government agrees with itself to do so--for example, by eminent domain, asset forfeiture, etc. Thus your attempt to interpret such seizure as a proper contract is inconsistent with reality.

The chain of theft was this: King George stole the land, and then gave it, via invalid patents, to various entities such as the East India Company, William Penn, etc. A subset of colonists then waged successful war on England and claimed, as spoils of war, the land that wasn't actually England's in the first place. Even before the war was over, royalists' property was unlawfully seized from them, and never subsequently returned by the new American government. The government even went on to repeat King George's crime, by claiming lands as far as the Pacific ocean--not to mention "buying" land, in an invalid transaction, from King Louis, who didn't properly own it.

Aside from all that, who besides you said the only way you can opt out is by submitting to a violation of your property rights?

The only "opt out" clause you've mentioned is to leave the country. This isn't possible without losing my property rights, since I do in fact have property in this country--and hence, cannot leave the country without sacrificing the right to live on my own land.

444 posted on 02/25/2006 5:53:35 PM PST by Shalom Israel (Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.)
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