— by Polydamas
Today, America celebrates the 243rd anniversary of winning its independence from Great Britain and establishing the first country in the history of the world that is premised upon its citizens having inalienable, meaning non-transferable rights. Up until 1776, every other country in the world was of the firm conviction that the lives, liberties, and properties of its citizens belonged in their entirety to their hereditary monarchs, dictators or governments. The only meaningful opposition to this conviction came from the camp of organized religion, which advanced the belief that a deity, as represented by human religious authorities, had prior ownership of the people. To simplify, every human being was either owned by the tribe’s chieftain or by its witch doctor.
The Founders of the United States advanced a very radical idea for their time, the idea of self-ownership. The lives, liberties, and properties of each person belonged to him or her own self. Individual rights were, in actuality, legal restraints upon the powers of the government to use and dispose of the lives, liberties, and properties of its people. The individual rights envisioned by the Founders were not discretionary gifts or allowances given to the people by United States of America or by the thirteen original states. Rather, they were rights that every human being naturally possessed by virtue of nature endowing them upon every person alive. Every person had the right to be free from the government: 1) taking the life he or she already had; 2) government imprisonment and deprivation of the liberty to live life according to one’s own chosen way of life; and 3) taking away the property that he or she accumulated through individual labor and free trade with other free individuals.
Individual rights do not mean that the government must supply its people with free jobs, free food, free housing, free education, free health care, free consumer goods, spending money, and the like. On the contrary, the government could not take away from a person the job or occupation that he already had, the house that he already lived in, the education that he already received, the doctor that he already had, the property and goods that he already possessed, the money that he already had, etc. The only people from whom the government could take away their lives, liberties, and properties were criminals, who had preyed on others, but only if the government did so through “due process of law”. Deprivation of life, liberty, and property could not be on the whim of a political leader or government official, but only by a court of law as the rightful punishment of the wrongdoer and compensation for the victims.
In the language of his era, which may be less understandable to contemporary Americans, James Madison, the secretary of the Constitutional Convention and principal author of the Constitution, wrote authoritatively in his essay “Property” on March 29, 1792:
In its larger and juster meaning, it [property] embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandise, or money is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
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.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.
That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Hindustan, under appellations proverbial of the most complete despotism.
That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favor his neighbor who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the economical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!
A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.
If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.
The Papers of James Madison, Volume 1, Chapter 16, Document 23.
James Madison and the other Framers of the United States Constitution and of the Bill of Rights would have been horrified to learn that their descendants and inheritors, two and a half centuries later, would seek to erect a new form of government that is diametrically opposed to the ones they had established. Had James Madison and the Founding Fathers been blessed with the gift of prophecy, they would have considered the election promises made by Democratic Party’s presidential candidates at the primary debates on June 26 and 27, 2019 to be their worst nightmare.
Every one of the 25 Democrat candidates running for President of the United States in 2020 believes in giving away “free stuff” to his or her constituents. All of them have publicly committed themselves to “free” health care for all, that would also cover illegal immigrants. No consideration was given by these candidates to the many billions of dollars on the price tag, and, especially not to the undeniable individual rights of the people who would be trampled by the government to extract the necessary funds to pay for universal health care.
Many of the candidates want to make college education completely “free” for every person, including illegal immigrants. For example, candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has called for wiping out $50,000 of educational debts for 45 million people. The price tag for this giveaway is $1.5 trillion. Every financial institution and every person who deposited funds in a financial institution that made student loans would have its assets nationalized. America would essentially import the Latin American or banana republic’s economic model of expropriating entire industries and businesses for the “national good”.
Another presidential candidate, Andrew Yang of Northern California, advocates giving away for “free” $1,000 per month to every person over the age of 18. According to Mr. Yang, his “Basic Universal Income” platform item of giving $1,000 every month to all adults would be funded by a value added tax on all products and services. However, this very idea reflects incredible ignorance of the economic principles of supply and demand.
An economic benefit that is bestowed upon every person is an economic benefit bestowed upon no one. In economic principle, giving an unearned $1,000 per month to every adult is no different than a high school teacher giving every student in the class an extra 10 points on the final examination and then re-applying the 90/80/70/60 percent grade curve. Ten points would not make “D” students into “C” students and “C” students would not become “B” students. A “C” student, who previously earned 70 points on a 100-point final examination, would then score 80 points on a 110-point final examination, which would still be a “C”.
In the same way, every one of the recipients of the “Basic Universal Income” would not have an extra $1,000 per month to pay for life’s necessities. On the contrary, the economic marketplace would automatically factor in that everyone was “richer” by $1,000 per month and overall prices would adjust upwards, causing inflation. Within days of giving every person a $1,000 monthly “raise” for doing absolutely no work, landlords would charge more rent from their tenants. Supermarkets would charge more for their groceries. Every one of life’s necessities would cost more and would eat completely into this $1,000 “raise” and would leave people with exactly the same gap between their income and expenses as before. Everyone would end up with having the same or worse purchasing power as before, except that they would need to carry more in paper money to buy the same products and services.
America’s Founding Fathers would not have recognized the terms “socialist” or “communist” as they were coined in the middle of the 19th century by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Yet they would have understood immediately how their vision of individual rights and attendant property rights was completely perverted by their would-be political heirs. The Founding Fathers had passed the Third Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbade the British practice of forcibly quartering soldiers in private American homes without the consent of the home owners. The American colonists were forced to feed and house in their homes British soldiers, thus, imposing considerable economic burdens upon the colonists. By diverting scarce economic resources to its soldiers, the British Crown hampered and prevented colonists from feeding and sheltering their own families and children. Many American colonists and their families went hungry while British soldiers enjoyed “free” food.
The same principle applies with equal force to the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates, who essentially seek to forcibly quarter strangers in the homes of Americans. There is no meaningful philosophical difference between forcing every American household to bear the heavy economic burdens of paying for the health care costs incurred by strangers–especially illegal immigrants–and paying for the room and board of British soldiers. Likewise, there is no philosophical distinction between imposing upon every American household the heavy educational expenses incurred by college-educated strangers and paying the upkeep of British soldiers.
In life, there is no such thing as a free meal. Calling something “free” to the recipient does not make it “free” to the person who is forced into giving. British soldiers may have received “free” food, drink, and lodging, meaning they did not have to personally pay out of their pockets for the economic benefits bestowed upon them. Yet the “free” food, drink, and lodging had to come from somewhere before they were forcibly transferred to the British soldiers. At significant expense to themselves and their families, the American colonists still had to plant the wheat and to raise the cattle that ended up in the bellies of the British soldiers. Similarly, American households must still pay for the “free” health care, the “free” college education, the “Basic Universal Income” to all adults, and all the other “freebies” that Democrat presidential candidates seek to bribe their constituents.
Today, America stands on the doorstep of disaster. More and more women, racial and ethnic minorities, and young people identify themselves as “socialists” or “progressives” than at any other time in American history. If they succeed in 2020 in electing one of their own philosophical and economic ilk to the highest office in the land, and if these politicians are successful at collecting and distributing “freebies” to their constituents in return for their votes, the United States of America of the past 243 years will be no more. The Founding Fathers’ priceless inheritance of freedom and liberty will have been forever squandered.