Question #10: What are the connections between liberty and property?
July 12, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 2 Comments
| 10 Foundational Questions | Introduction | Question #1 | Question #2 | Question #3 | Question #4 | Question #5 | Question #6 | Question #7 | Question #8 | Question #9 |
“…power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” -Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #79
A malignant idea exists in socialistic thought that societies can have political freedom with limited economic freedom. More precisely, this dangerous idea is that political and economic freedom are separate and distinct freedoms and that one can survive without the other.
Furthermore, in democratic socialism the theory is that wealth can be forcefully redistributed through the government, or in other words that society has a right to the economic labor of all individuals. At the heart of this destructive ideology is that economic freedom is unnecessary and that a society can still be free without it. Europe has embraced this ideology to a large extent, and America is not that far behind.
However, there is an inseparable connection between liberty and property, a connection that, if severed, leads to the loss of both liberty and private property.
Why It Matters
It is your unalienable right to work, to labor, and to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Freedom means the ability to control your destiny through your own effort–if the government takes the fruit of your labor (your property) for anything other than taxes to support its proper role, it reduces your ability to create the life of your choice.
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is no force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.” -John Adams
Furthermore, property is a tool to express your unique contribution to the world. Bill Gates shares his vision and business skills by creating computers. Ray Kroc shared his drive and innovation through real estate and hamburgers. Without private property rights, these men and others like them would have no outlet to express their individuality. If a person wishes to pursue their happiness by creating a business, that happiness will be deterred if they do not have access to create a physical manifestation of the business through property.
John Locke wrote extensively about this topic in his Second Treatise on Government. He wrote, “[E]very man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer; no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to….
“He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then when did they begin to be his? And ’tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done: and so they become his private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? … If such a consent as that was necessary man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that ’tis the taking part of what is common, and removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use.”
Without economic freedom all other freedoms are obsolete. With freedom comes the responsibility to use your hands, your mind, and your strength to care for yourself, to provide you and your family with economic necessities and desires. With responsibility comes opportunity to create your own destiny. Unless your private property rights are protected your ability to determine your life is severely limited.
Recommended Reading:
The Mainspring of Human Progress by H.G. Weaver
The Virginian by Owen Wister
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
Question #6: What is more important–culture, or politics and government?
June 21, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · Leave a Comment
| 10 Foundational Questions | Introduction | Question #1 | Question #2 | Question #3 | Question #4 | Question #5 |
“To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.” -Confucius
Although this is certainly debatable, it seems clear, when considering the four foundations of freedom, that culture is far more important than politics and government.
What I mean by culture is the social patterns, activities, mores, customs, belief systems, and sense of morality inherent to a society. It’s how the people at large behave in the absence of force. It’s how they view each other and their place in society and how they interact with one another.
In other words, in an aristocratic culture, poor members of society are unlikely to consider that they have the opportunity to attain a higher social status. In social democracies or meritocracies, however, individuals understand that they have the opportunity to be mobile in their social status. (And remember that there is a fundamental difference between a social democracy and a governmental democracy.)
Politics refers to how members of society make group decisions, and government is the institutionalization of force, or the way that political decisions are enforced.
Why It Matters
Although there is some overlap, morality is mainly the purview of culture. So if a nation has a government that stays within its proper realm–to protect unalienable rights–yet voluntary virtue is required to sustain this arrangement, then culture is far more important than its system of government.
By the way, it’s important to define morality, since there’s a tendency to think of morality only in terms of sexual purity. However, by morality I’m referring to a holistic sense of the word, a morality that includes far more than sexuality, including philanthropy, providence (or living up to one’s full potential and doing what they were born to do), personal responsibility, and stewardship.
Another way to explain the preeminence of culture of politics and government is through the principle of voluntarism, which states that the health of a society is equal to what individuals will do voluntarily without the force or assistance of the government.
James Madison explained this concept well in Federalist Paper #51. He wrote, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
In other words, he says that the primary way to preserve the society is through virtue in the people, but auxiliary precautions are also necessary, auxiliary precautions being the form of government.
For far too long, we’ve both depended on the government to do things we should be doing as private citizens in the realm of culture, and then blamed them when things go wrong.
It’s time for America to realize that our voluntary culture, or how we act in the absence of government, is far more important than anything the government does, since the government is nothing but a collective reflection of our private lives anyway.
Focus less on changing the government, and focus more on creating a family culture that makes illegitimate government functions unnecessary.
Recommended Reading:
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Giver by Lois Lowry
1984 by George Orwell
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
Problem Solvers: A New Political Ideal
April 14, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · Leave a Comment
The next time you’re asked about your political affiliation or leaning, say that you’re a problem-solver.
Because I often write about politics, I’m frequently asked what political party I belong to, or if I’m a liberal or a conservative. I always struggle with the answer because politics and society seem much too complex to pigeonhole ourselves into such sweeping generalizations.
For example, I believe that we are stewards of the earth, and as such, we should take care of it and maintain its beauty and sustain its productivity. So does this make me an environmentalist liberal? I believe that the proper role of government is to protect unalienable rights, including the rights of conceived but unborn children. I must be a conservative then, right? I adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s idea of foreign policy, “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Since our current neo-conservative foreign policy is at direct odds with this, then I must be a liberal.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. The broad and confusing labels of “conservative” and “liberal,” “Republican” and “Democrat” are prohibitively confining in an age when our problems are immensely complex, party lines are increasingly obscure, platforms are highly evolutionary, and our values seemingly too diverse to find common ground.
Pulitzer-prize winning historian and author of 1776 David McCullough once said something in an interview that resonated with my independent-thinking mind. He said, “….we’re all in this together. And I feel very strongly that we need people who are there to help solve problems. I wish we had a Problem-Solver Party because we have very big problems that need solving. And I think a lot of our attention is addressed to the wrong problems.”
Ah, if only…
If only we had a political party that was actually concerned with solving root problems, rather than selling the people on temporary Bandaids. If only there were politicians concerned with more than proving their opponents wrong, or amassing self-aggrandizing power. If only we had public servants who actually did what their title suggests: served the people out of a sense of true public virtue, as opposed to simply seeking the security of a government job.
I think that Mr. McCullough is on to something, and he just may have the solution that millions of Americans have been searching for. Wouldn’t that be something: an army of open-minded, principle-based, and independent thinkers united behind the common cause of solving problems? Surrendering ego, getting beyond shallow labels, and really being a force for deep, sustainable, and positive change?
The next time someone asks me if I’m a conservative or a liberal, I’m going to answer, “I’m a Problem-Solver.” I invite you to join the new party, or rather, the new political ideal.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
The Deception of Consumption
January 25, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · Leave a Comment
If anyone ever tries to tell you that the economy is driven by consumer spending, I have one piece of advice–RUN! This one fallacy alone has arguably caused more damage to our nation than any other, and a person who believes it is either deceived, or is using it to be deceptive, or both.
I walked out of an investing seminar recently because the speaker used this fallacy–that consumer spending is the basis of the economy–as a foundational argument for his thesis. His thesis was that America is headed toward a serious economic downturn based on future reduction of consumer spending, and that if we want to survive the rough times ahead then we need to amass as much money as possible, because money is what will save us.
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