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To: Willie Green
The role of government should be to promote the former while avoiding the latter.

People who believe in liberty do not agree with you.

The proper role of government in a free society is to defend rights.

That is one of the fundamental differences between us, you are an authoritarian. You believe in and advocate that force is used to achieve political ends. I do not. I also believe in property rights, you do not.

99 posted on 09/23/2002 11:44:22 AM PDT by Protagoras
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To: ThomasJefferson
People who believe in liberty do not agree with you.

"Libertarian" extremists are anarchists.

I also believe in property rights, you do not.

Once again, adolescent projection of extremist views.

"The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed... It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785. ME 19:18, Papers 8:682

"[The] unequal division of property... occasions the numberless instances of wretchedness which... is to be observed all over Europe."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785. ME 19:17, Papers 8:681

"I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785. ME 19:17, Papers 8:682

"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. ME 13:333


100 posted on 09/23/2002 12:10:19 PM PDT by Willie Green
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