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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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To: Shalom Israel

"The chain of theft was this:"

Aside from anything else that's going on, you've hit on something that we agree on.


I'm amazed.


450 posted on 02/25/2006 6:16:04 PM PST by KrisKrinkle
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To: Shalom Israel

"The only "opt out" clause you've mentioned is to leave the country."

I allowed the option of being an outlaw as far back as post 185, second to last sentence.


451 posted on 02/25/2006 6:31:14 PM PST by KrisKrinkle
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