Posted on 08/31/2013 6:12:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
You have nailed it.
The optimal amount of government is zero. We should always strive toward that goal.
When you understand this, it is apparent that there can never be compromise with those who believe in expanding government even slightly.
Except the "unique formulation of the Declaration" is "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", not just "happiness". To mean the same thing the words should be "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Property".
Life and Liberty are inherent to a human being. Happiness and Property are not. They must be pursued and attained. We have a right to pursue them but no guarantee that the pursuit will be successful.
The right to life is the supreme right, intrinsically. Without it, you can never enjoy your rights to liberty or private property. But the latter two are God-given and unalienable too.
I can see that one is born with life and that one is born with liberty to the extent one is able to exercise it, but I can’t see that one is born with property. One must pursue and acquire property.
The right to life is inherent, everyone starts with life.
The right to liberty is inherent, everyone starts with liberty, to the extent they are able to exercise it.
What property does everyone start with that would put the right to property (as opposed to the right to pursue property) on a par with the right to life and the right to liberty?
Nobody said there was a “par.”
“No other rights are safe where property is not safe.”
— Daniel Webster
“The great chief end therefore, of Mens’ uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.” “Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience,...”
— John Locke, 2nd Treatise of Government, 1690
“[T]he moment that idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the Laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist.”
— John Adams
“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”
— James Madison
“The central argument is that private or several property serves as a guarantor of liberty, quite independently of how political or collective decisions are made. The direct implication is, of course, that effective constitutional limits must be present, limits that will effectively constrain overt political intrusions into rights of property, as legally defined, and into voluntary contractual arrangements involving transfer of property. If individual liberty is to be protected, such constitutional limits must be in place prior to and separately from any exercise of democratic governance.”
— James M. Buchanan, Property as a Guarantor of Liberty
Are you saying I'm "Nobody"? Never mind, I'll rephrase:
What property does everyone start with as they start with life and liberty, so it can be said there is the right to property (as opposed to the right to pursue property) like there is the right to life and the right to liberty?
Further, if everyone, or even someone, doesn't start with property as they do life and liberty, to what property do they have a right so that it can be said they have a right to property?
That’s just a repeat of your post 16 to which I responded.
Yeah, I know. I’m simply reinforcing the fact that the founders considered the defense of private property rights to be essential to the maintaining of liberty.
“I’m simply reinforcing the fact that the founders considered the defense of private property rights to be essential to the maintaining of liberty.”
I agree. Further, it’s essential to any society/civilization above the level of savagery and chaos.
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